


four for each other

by Psythe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anal Sex, Biting, Blood Drinking, Breast Fucking, Consensual Drugging, Double Penetration, Downton Abbey - Freeform, Downton Abbey Spoilers, Ectobiological Incest, Established Relationship, Exploring Sexual Orientation, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mommy Kink, Multi, Nightmares/PTSD, Non-Epilogues AU, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Quadrant Confusion, Rainbow Drinkers, Rainbow drinker bites soothe the bite-ee and make them sleepy, Relationship Issues, Rough Sex, Sexual Exhaustion, Tentabulges, Troll Anatomy Headcanons, Vaginal Sex, Vampire Bite, Xeno, Xenobiology, poor communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 09:56:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15264963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psythe/pseuds/Psythe
Summary: Rose and Kanaya's marriage is happy, the two of them occasionally invite Roxy into their bed, and Rose dates Dave on the side, having finally formalized their longstanding emotional intimacy into a romantic relationship, one that endlessly frustrates the trolls with its defiance of the quadrants.But Rose wants more.





	four for each other

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rhaeluna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaeluna/gifts).



> Prompt:
> 
> "I humbly request fluffy and cute post-game canon-compliant-ish sweetness staring these four nerds. Find a decent reason for Kanaya, Dave, Rose, and Roxy to all be dating, living together, and then give them a chance to all get a lil frisky. Hella double bonus points if all the humans are trans. Some angst is fine, but if we could keep it cute and warm and uplifting that would be my jaaaaaaam."
> 
> Well! Here it is. Nobody wants to know what the process to get to this final version was like, and I apologize profusely to Scy and the other mods for putting them through it. I also offer my tremendous thanks to them for helping me get to the finish line. I apologize that I couldn't meet your request to have the human kids be trans - not being trans myself that was not something I felt I'd be able to do justice to. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. I very much enjoyed writing it, it was a very fun challenge. (I also discovered the only character ask meme entry that matters, which is 'Which Downton Abbey character is your character's favorite?')

  _i don't know where you're going,_  

_[but do you got room for one more troubled soul?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuNTFGnVm4k) _

 

  **Rose: Express silent dissatisfaction with embarrassment of riches.**

“Earth to Rose, hey, c’mon, Earth calling Rose, I know you got shit to do and outer helldimensions to go spirit journeying in but you could at least wait till I fall asleep,”

You blink.

You had been occupied with one of your favorite pastimes; losing yourself. In your own mind, as you so often do, and in the post-coital glow that follows Dave dissolving around and inside you and Roxy’s mouth and fingers driving you over the edge, in the feeling of Dave’s arm around you and the quiet relaxation that comes from extended time spent in his presence, sharp and contentious and profoundly comfortable for it. There is only one place in the world that compares to how at ease you feel when bitching with Dave about irrelevant nonsense, and that is in the arms of the woman you married.

Opposite him on the bed is an empty depression, like a footprint, the heat of Roxy’s body steadily dissipating from it. Beyond, a sliver of light extends from the seam between the door to the bathroom and its frame, preceding the waft of steam and the appealing smells of shampoo and conditioner. (So enjoying as she does her place between both of your legs, Roxy had come out of your enthusiastic erotic evening perhaps the most worse for wear in the stickiness department, and thus had claimed the first shower.)

You had found it very agreeable, as you both drowsed in the aftermath of your celebration. Dave has just returned on a visit from his wanderings throughout your new world, and you and Roxy had believed the situation worthy of commemoration.

And, of course, as you always do when you are comfortable and at leisure, you started overthinking things.

“Oh. It’s nothing,” you say, hoping that he is more convinced than you are. “You have only yourself to blame if I doze off. Your sheer, unbridled sexual power has left me totally exhausted.”

He snorts. “Ok yeah sure. In future I will make sure never to give you any orgasms on any occasion that’s even a little bit important. I can’t risk you conking out in the middle of some kinda big deal conversation about feelings or cosmic secrets or what kind of sauce I like on my troll food - which is what you actually asked me about - you might miss something big,” His hand strokes your arm with a gentleness that his voice rarely manages to convey. To understand what emotion Dave Strider is actually trying to express, you need to read all of him. You’ve learned that contrary to what you all believed, he’s actually _terrible_ at concealing his emotions. It’s just that he’s also equally bad at _expressing_ them, at least in conventional ways.

You smirk and prop yourself up on your elbow as you regard him coolly. “Don’t think you can bamboozle me with your clever ruses.”

“Oh, shit, ‘bamboozle’, huh? That’s like forty-eight points on a double word score,”

“You’re trying to get me to admit that I find you and your dick irreplaceable. This is an extremely old trick and I won’t be falling for it any time soon. I’m a little ashamed on your behalf that you resorted to it, frankly.”

“Ok but my dick _is_ irreplaceable, right,”

A retort springs to your lips, having to do with the idea that none of you are unique, and that he’s infinitely replaceable by other versions of him from other timelines, but you clamp down on it. It would hurt him. You know that by now. “Yes, in the sense that we are all singular beings, and that in all the history of this universe, subatomic particles have never aligned in precisely the same fashion as they have in you and your dick.”

“I heard a yes,” he rolls over onto his back, hands folded under his head, elbows jutting out like wings.

You huff and give him a little shove. “You’re a troglodyte.”

He withdraws a hand long enough to snap his fingers. “Fifteen points! And anyway you get yourself off to your dictionary.”

“You get _yourself_ off to the Scrabble score sheet, apparently. I think that’s a _lot_ more pathetic than pleasuring yourself by reading a dictionary.”

“I don’t hear you denyin’ it.”

You toss a pillow onto his face. “What kind of sauce _do_ you like on your troll food?”

“Well that question misses the point, because you’re just asking what kind of troll food do you like. Troll food basically goes at two speeds; completely goddamn off the chain, like, we’re talkin’ ‘you have to sign a waiver before we’re legally allowed to sell this to you’ in a human restaurant, and ‘literally does not taste like anything.’ It’s actually really amazing, it’s like nature conspired for millions of years to make grub meat the blandest thing imaginable, maybe it thought that would be a good defense mechanism for all these buggalos? Like it could just bore wild predators’ taste buds to death and they’d leave ‘em alone. For real, like, it’s amazing all the trolls from Alternia weren’t even _more_ socially maladjusted if this shit is pretty much all they were eating - but it turns out trolls will eat basically anything so it didn’t work. Oh man,” he grins and sits up a little against the headboard. “They actually have this old cartoon character, it’s in, like, the troll version of the Sunday funnies, and his thing is that he’s the boringest dude in the world. No one knows what color his blood is because he just wears _beige._ He types in beige, his quirk is that he spells and does everything right except there’s no capital letters, and he has all these different jobs in the different comics but it’s always the most boring job imaginable - tax accountant, guy who puts the keys that nobody ever uses in on keyboards, guy who screws the top onto jars of grubsauce, video game tester - and all he eats is unflavored grubmeat,”

You let his endless walls of words wash over you, like you were sinking into a warm bath. It was remarkable, and extremely comforting, to learn that his lines upon lines of inane red text, something that had become a constant, an ever-present backdrop in your life that had been irritating and amusing you for so long that you’d barely noticed when you started to miss it when it wasn’t around, were entirely representative of how he sounds in person. Once you became comfortable with one another, you were able to just relax, taking solace in the presence of the one other member of your species after you left the incipisphere, the boy who had chosen to die with you. Instead of trying to cling to a few more hours or days of life in that blighted, cancerous incipisphere, he had stayed - so that you would not have to do it alone.

“So eventually trolls met humans, after spending like three thousand years eating gross unflavored grubmeat that tastes like the color beige, and some human genius took a look at it and was like, ‘wait why don’t you put some sauce on this?’ And historians can only assume that the trolls back then just _stared_ at them, it was like the end of 2001, they were monkeys lookin’ at monoliths, they saw themselves as wigglers and those wigglers were holdin’ seasoned grubmeat,”

Dave has been inspired, so you understand, by stories Dirk has told him of the escapades of his post-scratch self’s early life. Apparently there was a persistent legend that the other version of him traveled across the country in his youth, stowing away on boxcars and in the backs of pickup trucks to seek his fortune. Dave has decided that he likes the idea, and has been adventuring across your new Earth, hitchhiking and cribbing rides in carts and scuttlebuggies, seeing the world. He’s extraordinarily disciplined about it, setting himself ‘save points’ in advance, and forbidding himself from flying or time traveling or using any of the other extraordinary means of travel you all have at your disposal until he reaches one. He says he wants to experience the world the way a normal person would, within reason.

(You’re proud of him.)

“So basically this whole school of cuisine popped up where you use regular grubmeat as a base, and it’s just an excuse to mix together other sorts of flavors and give you a sorta platform for them, so you’re not just, like, snorting lines of neat spice or drinkin’ mustard vinaigrette straight out of the bottle. It’s pretty cool actually? I’m gonna mess with it for the snacks when Kanaya gets back. When’s she comin’?”

“Monday morning,” you say, falling quiet again.

“Ok sweet I got time to make you and Rox try the failed batches and watch y’turn all kinds of interestin’ colors. Then I’ll be outta your way.”

When you don’t respond, he turns his head to raise an eyebrow at you, the corners of his mouth twisted down very slightly, just barely visible in the thin line of yellow light peering out from the bathroom door. “...’sup?”

“Nothing,” you say, on reflex. He starts to sigh. “No, there is something.

...why don’t you stay? When Kanaya gets here. It can be the four of us.”

He looks at you, uncomprehendingly. “Naw. I don’t wanna get in the way. I got shit to do with Dirk anyhow.”

“You wouldn’t be in the way.” you say, hastily.

“But, like. That’s. Y’know. Girl time. And stuff. You’re, y’know.” He looks awkward. “Married, and stuff.”

“I know. And I’d like to have you there, still. And stuff.”

“What’s goin’ on? Where’s this all comin’ from?”

“...I think,” you say, quietly, part of you perhaps hoping that you’ll be inaudible over the sound of the shower, “that I’m tired of having to choose between the people I love.”

“But-” he actually looks alarmed. “You don’t. That was, like, Article One. We trade off, we all get our fair share’a time, you-”

“Yeah,” you murmur. “but when I’m with you, I miss her. And when I’m with her, I miss you.”

That actually silences him - one of the few times in your life you’ve been able to do that - and he flops back down onto the pillow.

“...there’s more to it,” you say, hesitantly, after a while.

His gaze snaps over to you as though tugged on a string.

“There’s … a sexual element. To it.”

You flush what must be _brilliant_ red. You must look like Kanaya with her luminescence turned up right now.

“As in....”

“As in … I really, really want you both. At the same time.”

Dave swallows, very hard.

“...is Kanaya okay with that?” he asks, at last, after a very long few moments.

“I ... don’t know,” you admit. “There’s … not much we wouldn’t do for each other. And she’s very fond of you.”

“She is?” he sounds _astonished._ (About as astonished as he suggested those long-ago trolls must have been at the prospect of seasoning their food.)

“Of _course_ .” You actually laugh a little bit. “Dave, the reality is that, obnoxious as you are at times, I don’t know of a single person you’ve befriended or even interacted in a vaguely positive way with who wouldn’t testify as to your character under oath. And the only person I can think of who actually actively _disliked_ you was Gamzee, and he was insane, _and_ you had personally insulted and made light of his religious beliefs. So, that’s the bar for someone to be genuinely negatively inclined towards you.”

He lays there, looking vaguely shell-shocked, no doubt racking his brains for some kind of argument that disproves your assessment of him, and then mumbles, “Ok sure. But. Like. She’s married.”

You pause, and then offer him a helpless little smile. “So am I. But, well, here we are. Everyone knows about it and no calamities have occurred.” You lean against the headboard, raising your eyebrows at him. “You _can’t_ tell me the thought has never crossed your mind.”

“Oh god. This is a trap,” He makes an expression not entirely unlike that of a deer about to be hit by an eighteen-wheeler, his eyebrows elevated. (He’s used to performing this facial maneuver with his shades on, where it has at least some chance of making him look cool to someone who doesn’t know him terribly well, but it ends up being quite comical with his face bared.) “You think I’m gonna say no and badmouth your taste like that?”

You fold your arms.

“... I mean, shit,” He cowers beneath your interrogative glare, “of course I think Kanaya’s hot, she’s, like, the raddest prettiest troll vampire chick,” he babbles, “Ok I mean no she’s not but that’s just ‘cause Porrim exists, and, y’know, that’s like sayin’ Bat Outta Hell sucks just ‘cause you like Paradise by the Dashboard Lights More,”

You clear your throat.

“It’s just, she’s off limits?” he hurries on. “Like I think that’s what gettin’ married means. At least I always thought so? And I think I kinda stopped noticing how stupidly fuckin’ gorgeous she is after a while, you wouldn’t think that specific part of a dude’s brain could turn off for any reason but hey, I guess you’d be wrong. Hope you didn’t bet the mortgage on that one, and, like, there’s probably some kinda self-preservation territorial thing involved too? Like, if I ever started creeping on your girl I’m pretty sure you’d tear my throat out with your teeth and then display my corpse at the border of our hunting ground as a warning to the rest of the pack,”

“The pack of lesbians?” You quirk a brow.

“...I mean yeah in this metaphor that’s accurate.”

You nod. “Mhm. Makes sense. Carry on.”

He sits for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. More silence. More steam wafting out through the cracks at the doorway’s edges, more sweet smells of conditioner and shampoo. You can practically hear the gears turning in his head, like the brass cogs of his volcanic planet.

“It’ll be fine,” you say, reassuringly. “And regardless of what happens, I still want you to stay. We all enjoy your company.”

“...you’re sure Kanaya’ll be chill.”

You pat him on the shoulder reassuringly. “Kanaya is the chillest person that any of us know. She is cool as a cucumber. She is steady as the Earth’s crust. Dependable and sincere as a well-wound watch. Let me get my thesaurus, I can keep going all night.”

“Oooooh,” The door to the bathroom swings open. You hadn’t even noticed that the shower had stopped running. “Damn rite you can go all nite. I just got clean but if you two wanna keep at it, I dunno if I can decline.” Both of your eyes go to the doorway where Roxy’s bodacious profile is framed in the rectangle of light, attention momentarily magnetized to her magnificent naked body, before she swings a towel around herself and restores rational thought to the pair of you. “What are we talkin’ about?” She plops herself down on the side of the bed, her femininity bouncing and quivering appealingly.

You hesitate, but then Dave just comes out and says, plain as day, “We were talkin’ about Rose’s sexual frustrations.”  
  
Roxy’s face lights up and she waggles her eyebrows with astonishing dexterity. “Oooo, y’don’t say? There anything I can do to help you _relieve_ some’a that _frustration_ , Rosie?”

You sigh, thumping back against the headboard again. “Well, yes. If you can figure out a good way to explain to my wife that I would like her to stick her bulge in my pussy while my boyfriend does me in the ass.”

Roxy gazes thoughtfully at the ceiling fan for a moment, and then shrugs. “I dunno, I could just ask her?”

Now it’s _your_ turn to stare as though you had just received a history-altering culinary revelation.

 

* * *

 

\-- techieGnostalgic  [TG] began pestering grimAuxiliatrix [GA] at 22:19 --

 

TG: heyyyy kanaya

TG: kanayaaaaaa

TG: kanny

TG: poke poke

TG: beep bop

TG: kanaya kanaya bo banaya

TG: banana fana fo fanaya

TG: fe fi fo fanaya

TG: kanaya!

TG: bam

TG: nailed it

TG: defs did not have to look up how that went

TG: rite off the top of my head

GA: While I Admire Your Boundless And Enviable Memory

GA: Reminiscent Though It May Be Of The Hard Drive Of A Powerful Supercomputer

GA: Or Perhaps A Mighty And Learned Wizard

GA: (Feel Free To Pick Whichever Simile You Feel Best Suits Your Current Preferred Self Image)

GA: The Word Fanaya Sounds Very Slightly More Like A Mixture Of My Name And That Of Feferis Than I Am A Hundred Percent Comfortable With

GA: I Appreciate The Effort You Invested In Getting My Attention With A Relentless And Commandingly Obtrusive Barrage Of Trollian Notifications

GA: But I Would Prefer That My Name Not Be Aligned With That Of My Kismesis

GA: If It Is Not Too Much Trouble

TG: oh omg

TG: no problem

TG: i still dont get how anyone could hate one half of dear, sweet, precious, fefeta

TG: but its all good

TG: no more fusions

TG: even though fanaya kind of sounds like what members of yr fan club should be called

GA: Okay Well That Is Infinitely More Distressing To Me Than The Prospect Of Being Connected So Closely With Feferi In A Nomenclatural Sense

GA: Did You Troll Me With A Conversation Topic In Mind Or Did You Call Only To Bombard Me With Concerning And Sort Of Embarrassing Mental Images

TG: aw man  
  
TG: isnt just wanting to talk 2 the raddest hottest rainbow drinker i know who is also married 2 my daughtermom enough reason

TG: did i wake you up or smthin

GA: You Did Not

GA: I Was Actually About To Attempt To Get Some Rest

GA: There Are Recuperacoons On The Train Which Is Very Convenient

TG: nice

TG: u got the good tickets huh

GA: Im Worth It

TG: LOL

TG: yeah you are girl

TG: preach it

TG: ok but actually i did msg for a reason

GA: Feel Free

GA: I Do Not Have Very Much To Do

GA: I Bought Some Books At The Station Hub But They Were Not Particularly Wise Purchases

GA: I May Give Them To You Or One Of The Striders To Ritually Deface

TG: fuck yes

TG: ok but yea

TG: speakin of fuck and yes

TG: so

TG: rosie rly wants something but she and davey are both 2 embarassed to talk to u about it

GA: What

GA: I Assure Rose That She Can Confide In Me About Absolutely Anything

TG: she wants you to bone her in front while dave bones her in back

TG: are you into that

TG: y/n

GA:

GA: Hm

TG: lol thats a fair reaction tbh

TG: but yea im just the messenger

TG: you know how those two get when they gotta be honest abt shit

TG: so i thought this was just easier

GA: No

GA: I Appreciate It

GA: I Admit That I Have Played This Role In Certain Other Quadrants And Friendships On Occasion

GA: At Times There Are Things That People Need To Know That Other People Are Not Willing To Tell Them

GA: For Whatever Reason

GA: It Is Not Entirely Dissimilar To Ashen Mediation

GA: Just Less Intimate

GA: So

GA: Rose Wants To Have A Concupiscent Encounter With Both Dave And I At Once

GA: I Admit To Being Unsure Why This Was Something Rose Required A Middletroll To Talk About

GA: Or Middlehuman As The Case May Be

GA: Polyamory Within The Same Quadrant Carries Little To None Of The Stigma Here It Did On Alternia

GA: Rose I Should Think Is Well Within Her Rights To Want To Be With Both Of Her Matesprits At The Same Time

TG: well uh

TG: dave thinks you might not want to?

TG: and he doesnt want 2 pressure you or anything

GA: I See

GA: I Certainly Do Not Feel Pressured

GA: This Is Something That Will Make Rose Happy

GA: Correct

TG: OH yea

TG: shes rl thirsty i cant lie to u

GA: And Does Dave Object At All

GA: I In Turn Would Not Want To Pressure Him

TG: aw heck no

TG: look kanaya u want me to share a sweet secret with u about my kids

TG: some hot hot strilonde deets

TG: gonna just steal the not knowing right off of this info for u

GA: Well

GA: It Must Be Said That On Other Occasions In My Life When I Have Received Assistance From The Rogue Of Void The Results Have Been Spectacular And Quite Literally Life Altering

GA: I Am Not Sure If This Will Prove To Have The Same Impact As Your Deliverance Of My Entire Species

GA: But I Would Be Pretty Stupid If I Turned You Down

TG: haha yeah

TG: look this is the thing

TG: you and daveo have one big thing in common

TG: and thats that rosie is ur #1 top priority

TG: u both just want whats best for her and whatll make her happy

TG: if ur on board

TG: daves on board

TG: you r both marchin under the banner of rose is super important + deserves good things

TG: (this is a thing that i super endorse btw)

TG: (this platform gets my endorsement)

TG: (might help u secure that sweet sweet crapace vote)

TG: *CARAPACE LOL

TG: omg even for me that was fuckin shameful

TG: dont tell anyone about that one pls

GA: Its A Testament To My Profound Respect For And Gratitude To You That I Am Not Immediately Sending A Screenshot Of This Conversation To The Majority Of My Trollslum

TG: lmao

TG: who says good deeds dont pay off rite

TG: make a space egg and save a whole species and people will keep your humiliating dumbass typos on the down low

GA: I Will Limit Myself To Saving The Screenshot For My Own Personal Enjoyment

TG: HEY

GA: I Appreciate The Advice

GA: I Think I Knew That What You Are Telling Me Is True

GA: As Much Was Said When We Discussed The Formalization Of Rose And Dave’s Relationship

GA: But I Think Its Good That I Was Reminded

GA: Thank You

TG: big thumbs up emoji kan

GA: Please Tell Rose And Dave That I Am Entirely On Board With Rose’s Proposal

GA: And That I Will Troll Rose Momentarily

TG: u got it girl

TG: see u tmrw ; )

TG: wonk

GA: Wonk To You Too Roxy

GA: I Said It Out Loud Just Now And Felt Extremely Silly But Also Weirdly Liberated

TG: thats how it goes!!!

TG: gnite kanaya

TG: <3

GA: <3

 

\-- techieGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering grimAuxiliatrix [GA] at 22:40 --

 

* * *

 

**Roxy: Sing like nobody’s listening.**

“So Iiiii’ll just pretend, that I know which way to bend,” you sing, “and I’m gonna tell the whole world that you’re miiiiine, just hmm hmm-hm-hmm when I see you clap your hands,” you clap, real loud, and Rose raises an eyebrow and Dave peeks out from the kitchen. “if you stick around I'm sure that you'll be fiiiiiine…

…‘cause I don’t feel like dancin’ when the old Joanna plays, my heart could take a chance but my two feet can’t find a way,”

Dave’s voice hollers out from the other room. “Who’s Joanna?”

“One ‘n’ or two?” Rose pipes up.

You pause your current fight in _Dance Dance Revolutionary Road_ (your _favorite_ Dave Strider-produced tactical RPG/rhythm game/farming sim hybrid video game adaptation of a diCaprio movie complete with the man himself’s voiceover(yes, that was a subgenre, and this one is _the best_ )) and whip your phone out of your ‘dex. “Two ‘n’s,” you quickly report.

“Then she could theoretically have been a troll. Joanna has six letters.”  
  
“Well,” you add, “Google says a ‘Joanna’ is Cockey rhyming slang for ‘piano’. Which is p good, but I like your version better.”  
  
“A Cockney rhyming troll playing the piano in the back of a speakeasy?” Rose smirks. “This sounds like a short story waiting to happen.”  
  
“Hell yes,” you grin, “that or my next RP character. I gotta learn some Cockney rhyming slang.” You pick your DS back up. “Where’s Kan at? It’s ten, she’s ‘sposed to be here.”  
  
“It’s nine fifty-eight,” Rose says, not looking up from her laptop.

“What _evs_ ,” you whine, laying it on way too thick on purpose. “Dave, what time is it?”

“Nine fifty-eight,” he calls back.  
  
Rose smirks. You make a grumpy face. You get back to _Dance_ _Revolutionary_ and bust out Leo’s Surpassment Maxiburst on your hapless foes, obliterating an entire row of pseudophysical manifestations of suburban working-class existential despair with a sick-ass dulcimer solo.

(Man, your world’s Dave really did make the best games.

You understand from your mom’s notes - secret info and journals that only you have seen - that this particular title was conceived of when her and Dave were laying in bed in a hotel room one night, so smashed that they couldn’t even bone properly - so they just started bullshitting. They woke up the next morning and found a text document full of ideas that neither of them remembered coming up with, but Dave immediately knew they were gold.)

“Have you reached out to Jane yet?”

“Huh?” You’re too busy strumming on a digital string instrument with the stylus to look up.

“About the meeting.”

“Oh!!! Yea. She’s doin’ her Big Corporate Businesswoman Perfectionista thing and getting like fifty pages of legal documents and three Powerpoint presentations ready.” You almost forgot. There’s a big meeting coming up with a bunch of mayors and big shots from the Human and Carapacian Kingdoms to talk about some stuff. The big thing is apparently coming up with an agreement to make sure both species have comfy places to live and decent access to food and stuff (Humans and chess people have _really_ different cuisine, Prospit folks only eat veggies and Dersites only eat meat, and pretty much all chess people can eat things that are just straight up not okay for humans to put in their mouths!), plus like calculating how much it costs to mail stuff between kingdoms and a bunch of busywork shit like that. You already wrote a program that just indexes legal and material databases and collects all the relevant info, but Callie’s _insisting_ on going through it by hand with a bunch of carapace bureaucrats. (She’s so cute.) “You think the Derse folks are gonna make any trouble?”

Rose makes a skeptical face at you over the top of her computer screen. “I think the earth is round and the sky is blue as well, yes. The actual Royalist movements of both species I imagine are going to raise a stink. We need to be prepared for that.”

You wince. There’s some carapaces who aren’t adapting too well to living outside of the game and want to go back to the old way of doing things, which of course along with everything else it might mean means trying _really really hard_ to kill everyone of the other color. “Yea. I mean we’ll be there in person and they seem to think we’re cool. Ish. Also we’re badasses, lol.”

“Mhm. That’s not what I’m worried about. Dirk thinks that even a failed attempt to disrupt things would be good for them, and I agree - they need to cause trouble, stay in the news. We need to make sure that everything remains stable long enough to exact most of our reforms, and then keep it that way long enough to prove that they’re for the best.”

You nod, sagely. “Yea for sure. Also if everything else goes wrong I told Janey to just prank ‘em. No one’s gonna take ‘em seriously if they try to like kidnap the ministers or something while covered in shaving cream with snakes poppin’ outta cans all over ‘em.”

Rose makes an evil grin. You like the shape her mouth makes when she looks like that. “We should arrange for some additional news crews, in that case.”

“Can you get us any kinda Seer deets on all this? It’d probs be super helpful if we weren’t just guessin’ what’s gonna happen.”

Rose folds her hands, looking thoughtful and serious. “Possibly. I haven’t tried yet because the possible concerns are so open-ended - Terezi would be downright lost in a sea of possible outcomes and junk data, and I need to know very specifically what I’m looking for when I use my abilities. Tomorrow I’ll talk to Terezi and Aradia and see if there are any good ways to narrow things now, maybe by combining Aspects.”

“Oh man.” Your mind flashes back to the dope-ass fraymotifs you all kicked out in your final fight with the Batterwitch. “You just hit me up if you need me for any cool mix-ups, Rosie,”

“I might,” she says, entirely seriously. “I can absolutely think of ways that Void could be useful in narrowing down the possibilities, assuming our powers don’t cancel one another out.”

You think about this for a bit as Rose goes back to typing whatever she’s typing. You were actually just kind of fishing for a chance to hang around and pretend to be useful, you didn’t actually think you could help in any way - but it does kinda make sense, doesn’t it? You steal shadows, you take away darkness and secrets in a way that helps everyone. Maybe you can pull some of the wool off of Rose and TZ’s eyes. Or! The right answer (or the right question you guess) is a secret, right? Because no one knows it! Maybe you can steal the hidden-ness out of that info!

Dave comes strolling out of the kitchen, preceded by his PR team of _amaaaaazing_ smells, with a huge-ass tray in his hand. “Where’s Kan at again?” he asks.

“She should be here any moment,” Rose says, still tapping away. You lean over the table to inspect the platter. He’s got tortilla wedges and his special dip, he’s got bagel chips, he’s got three different kinds of cheeses, he’s got grubcakes with like ten different dipping sauces and spices, dude, he’s even got fresh kerberries on here! Those are out of season! Where’d he g- oh. Right Time traveler. Duh!

He looks at you disapprovingly as you reach out for one. “C’mon, hands off at least ‘til Kanaya gets in, I don’t want you two eatin’ all the snacks before we’re all here. Obviously everything is fucking _delicious_ so you aren’t gonna be able to resist.”

“Humble much, lol,” you snort, but you sit back on the couch and stretch. You’re paying attention and you know Daveo and Rose are looking at you as your toned arms roll around your shoulders, the movement of your muscles lifting your chest up a little in your tank top. You catch them looking and give them a wonk.

Rose coughs and tries to focus on her writing, but it takes her a sec to pull her eyes away, and you’re no Time player but you catch that sec. Dave goes hot in the face, but then he gets kind of bummed-out looking and sits down in an armchair, leaving the the platter of goodies on the end table. Aww. That’s not OK. You sit down next to him and sling an arm over his shoulders. “What’s wrong, Davey?”

He blushes even more. “Aw, it’s nothin’.” He pulls some kind of little red gizmo out of his ‘dex and raps on the platter with it, and it gets all shaky and weird-looking as he freezes it in time - when it’s time to dig in, it’ll still be hot and fresh.

You roll your eyes harder than anyone has ever rolled anything, you think. “Rose is there like a cheat sheet I can get for you two that translates exactly what kinda ‘nothin’’ it is when one’a you says ‘nothin’’? Is it a ‘something, but I don’t want to talk about it’ nothin’, a ‘something, but I don’t know _how_ to talk about it’ nothin’, or a ‘I don’t actually mind talking about it but I don’t want to bug you with my problems that I don’t think are important’ nothin’?’ Can I get like some Mavis Beacon Teaches Emotionally Repressed Dorks?”

That gets a chuckle out of Dave. Rose sighs. “I would buy a whole _series_ of programs along those lines.”

“Tell me about it, lmao,” you snort, and then turn back on Dave. “For real though Davey, what’s up?”

“I dunno.” he mumbles. “Just kinda nervous. About. Y’know. Kanaya.”

“Aw man it’s okay, b!” You give him a lil’ kiss on the cheek. “She’s totally on board, it’s no problem! What are you so worried about?”

“...nothin’. I dunno.” He squirms a little. “I, just don’t wanna fuck anything up for anyone.”

“Dave.” All of a sudden Rose is there. She puts her hand over his, and she’s being really soft and gentle, but she has this kind of unimpressed face on, and she says “Don’t overestimate yourself. We’ve been married for three years. I assure you that our relationship can survive a gaffe or two from you.”

You get real nervous - that does not seem like a helpful thing to say - but apparently it worked for Dave, ‘cause he gives a little snort and straightens up. “Yeah, I mean, if I somehow managed to make a dent in you two’s powerful gay energy either I’m runnin’ way too hot or somethin’s fuckin’ with your mojo.”

Rose smiles at him, what looks a lot like a cold, smug sort of face, but you know her well enough by now to know what it means. That’s her default position, when her and him are just kicking back and BSing. That’s the neutral stance. She’s sending him a signal. It means ‘everything’s normal. It’s all ok.’ Dave puts his poker face back on, and gives her his usual unruffled, cool Dirk-face. ‘Message received’, it says.

Then her ice queen look melts a little and she gives him a hug. Just a real quick one, but real tight.

You’re biting your lip, and you have the beginnings of a couple little happy tears in the corners of your eyes. The two of them have their whole little private thing going on, they don’t show it to other people really. Even them hugging with anyone else around is kind of a gauge of how much they trust you.

You love them, _so much_.

Rose goes back to her computer, you go back to your game, and Dave breaks out a comic book trade paperback and reads while he stands guard over the snack platter. You recognize the book. It’s one of Dirk’s. You smile to yourself as you take Leo deeper into the ‘burbs.

 

* * *

 

 

God Kanaya looks good. Like, obvs she always looks good, but it’s honestly kinda ridic how good she looks for someone who just got back from the troll babymaking caves up to her elbows in sludge. She’s not dolled up or anything, she just has her black shirt and this nice swishy blue skirt - though you do note as she steps over the threshold that she has classy little one-inch heels on that make her calves look like _unf._ God, she’s hot, she is such an Em Eye Ell Eff - ok, well, not the champion MILF, Porrim still gets that prize, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of, that’s like saying someone isn’t warm because they aren’t the Sun, and anyway Kanaya is fuckin Fine with two capital Fs. Your Rosie landed herself a Choice Muhfuckin’ Fish.

(Or, choice muhfuckin’ vampire. The vampire is _hate-dating_ the fish.)

“Roxy, dear,” Rose says. “You’re drooling again.” You blink and frantically wipe at your mouth.

There is no drool. You groan. You got got. Rose chuckles. “Just keeping you on your toes. You were staring at my wife for so long that I had to make sure you were still with us and hadn’t lost yourself to some astral realm of jadeblood-focused erotic fantasization.”

Your face gets real hot. Kanaya is smiling at you, though her own face is filling in with green, just a lil’. “Look,” you say, “it’s not my fault you married such a hottie. For reals, you look like a billion boondollars, Kan. Or, like, one boonbuck.”

Kanaya looks mildly taken aback. “That’s an awful lot of hypothetical attractiveness currency.”

“Yea well you’re worth every boonpenny, girl.” You wink. You really are, like, visibly slobbering over Kan, aren’t you. God. You have the biggest crush on your daughtermom’s wife. It’s kiiiiinda embarrassing, en gee ell.

Rose steps up and they kiss, Rose clasping both sides of Kanaya’s head, Kanaya’s hands drifting down to hover at the lowest point of Rose’s waist, _just_ above her ass. It takes them a minute to separate. You’re chewing on your lip again by the time they pull apart. You shoot a little eyebrow waggle at Dave. You’re pretty sure he gets it.

Your legs eat up the distance between you and Kan in two or three really big bites and you throw your arms around her. "Kanny!” you squeal, squeezing her tight. She chuckles and leans in to plant a few little kisses on your face - but you just reach up and give her one full on the mouth, and she makes a little _mmmph_ noise into your lips for a sec but then she slides her arms around you and starts nibbling at your mouth with her sharp little fangs and you practically vibrate with joy for a moment at the way Kanaya makes you feel.

Lastly, she swooces on over to Dave, bends down, and plants a quick little kiss on his cheek.

He turns bright fuckin’ red. “You, uh, you didn’t have to do that or nothin’,”

“It seemed like the least I could do. We are going to be working very closely together in the near future.”

 _Come on, come on_ , you think, _catch it, catch it…_

He catches it. “Yeah, y’know, that’s true. You and me gotta get a good rapport goin’ if we’re gonna pull off this fraymotif, the one that puts a status effect on Rose - which one is it again?” And he tosses it back, and…

“Exhausted, I believe,” And Kanaya catches it! Touchdown!

Now it’s Rose’s turn to glow like Rudolph’s red nose.

You give Dave a little punch in the arm. “Hey so! Didn’t you say you had somethin’ special lined up for us?”

“Oh shit,” Dave says, “Hell yes I do. First off, ok, call me Santa Claus ‘cause I brought souvenirs. Rox-”  
  
He cycles through his ‘dex and then decaptchas what looks basically like a bundle of troll biotech, kinda like a gamegrub, tied to a block of human-built plastic and metal by this unbelievably dense cluster of wires and cables. You gasp as you realize what it has to be. “Is that-”  
  
“Yep. A bona fide gamegrub-to-digital universal adapter. Works for any console on the shelves right now, except for that stupid troll Mengax Superlative, but they only ever made one good game for that thing anyway.”  
  
“Holy shit Davey you actually found one??” You are kind of flipping the fuck out. You and Sollux were never able to locate one of these so you could play all your games together. A lot of folks online thought there weren’t any left, but when you tried to Rogue one up, it didn’t work, so you knew that at least one had to still exist _somewhere_ .  
  
“Damn fuckin’ skippy. Maybe you can use this to finally get Captor’s attention and make your move.” He performs an eyebrow waggle of his own in your direction.

You are pretty sure your face lights up like a fuckin’ traffic light on Stop. Rose and Kanaya are smiling knowingly at you. Ok so you really like Sollux. Like, _really_ like him. He’s cute! Sue you. You stick it in your ‘dex with a huff. “Whatever! What else y’got!”

“Well, this one’s for you,” Next he pulls out a big-ass canister with a picture of a blueblood with right-angle horns wearing a crooked grin. It’s labeled in troll letters, which you start translating in your head but before you can finish Dave holds it out to Kanaya and says “By all rights I shoulda got you something cool and fashionable but I woulda just fucked it up and I was too nervous to ask Porrim for help so I just got you this instead. Four hundred and thirteen ounces’a Garvak’s Old-Fashioned Multifiltered Antiwear Lubrication Fluid.” You realize that he looks embarrassed. “Great for chainsaws!” He coughs. “It, uh. Says that on the can.”

You’re pretty sure you aren’t the only one who is surprised by how amazed and excited Kanaya looks as she accepts the canister. “Thank you, very much! will grease my rip-engine’s chain at the soonest possible opportunity.” (That sounds so much like a sneaky way to say ‘jerk off’. You have to stop yourself from giggling and ruining this sweet moment.) She gives a little hug. “How extraordinarily thoughtful of you, Dave.” He swallows, super hard. Kanaya tucks the can into her ‘dex and then gives him another little kiss on the side of his face. This one feels a lot more legit. Dave is turning the color of his goddamn Knight outfit. You make eye contact with Rose for a sec. Oh yeah. Kanaya’s totally got this.

“Uh, yeah, definitely,” he babbles, “I am the most thoughtfulest. I am thoughtful as _balls_ . Thoughtful is my middle name.”  
  
“You seem to have a lot of middle names.” Kanaya says, reasonably. “Does this one come before or after Sword-fucker, Goth-Whisperer, Elizabeth, DJ-Derse, John Henry, Chutney, and-slash-or Private Ryan?”

Davey is still sweating. He comes up to Kanaya’s _neck_. “In between DJ-Derse and John Henry,” he says back.

“You called yourself ‘Goth-Whisperer’?” Rose butts in, her arms crossed in a foreboding fashion. It forebodes right now, big time.

“Look, Rose, I know you too well for everyone involved, and I understand the basic truth of paradox space that you can take the girl out of the edgy dark wizard getup and the eyeshadow, but you can’t ever take the edgy dark wizard getup and the eyeshadow out of the girl. As evidenced here in People’s Exhibit B, which is that as soon as we got on that meteor you alchemized eyeshadow and started smearing it on.

“He’s not entirely wrong, dear.” Kanaya slides an arm around Rosie and gives her a little squeeze. They’re so fuckin cute. “Do you have something for Rose?”

“Oh, yeah, shit,” Last he decaptchas a huge package of yarn, a bunch of spools all bundled together and tied up with cord, and tosses it to Rose. “So, I been all over, done a couple turns everywhere, I chilled out in Prospitia for a while when we first got here - not really my kinda place, too cheery, like a whole city of Jakes - y’know, nice at first but then you start to overdose on it - so then I went to Neoderse, that’s a pretty cool town, I own an apartment there, but ‘sa little too intense to live in all the time - last time I went through the cute little hives around Tungsten, I didn’t wanna actually go into the city, too much crap in the air, but there’s all these suburbs around it in like rings? Actual literal lawnrings, aha, oh man, I just got that,” he does that little thing that he does instead of laughing, where he grins and sort of pantomimes a laugh, his chest shaking up and down. It makes his freckles do a lot of really cute things. He’s really adorable when he’s happy and you kind of want to kiss him. “But yeah I’ve done a bunch of trips hitchhiking and riding on trains and monorails and stuff all over the place - in troll country all the fuckin’ buses have legs so if you want to get anywhere you can’t eat breakfast beforehand or you’ll get seasick and be hurlin’ out the windows, oh man the locals in Tungsten have so much fun messing with human tourists who do that, it’s like a spectator sport-”

Rose is turning the package over, unwinding a little bit of each kind of thread and examining them with a far away look in her eye. “But yeah so like eventually I started picking up these yarns in each place I went, I’d find a craft store and be like ‘hey, sell me something!’ and I put ‘em all together like this so you got at least one from each Kingdom, and I was like hey I bet Rose could make something kitschy out of this-”

Rose closes the distance between them and holds up a hand, and Dave freezes for a second. Then, slowly, he relaxes, tension running out of him, and she grasps the side of his face, not exactly roughly but _defs_ not gently, and just plants a big messy one right on his lips. Now Dave’s the one who kinda thrashes and makes muffled noises for a sec, and then just sorta sags into it as Rose makes out with him.  
  
When she finally lets him go and backs off they both have way rosy cheeks and you are kiiiinda turned on, you can’t lie. “Thank you,” Rose says, very unnecessarily, and turns away.

Kanaya looks a little surprised as Rose steps back over to her. Rose whispers something you can’t make out in her ear and sticks the package of yarn in her sylladex.

“You should tell us some more stories from your wanderings,” Rose says to Dave, who still looks a little bit like he just got run over by a scuttlebuggy. “You’ve been gone for a while.”  
  
“Oh, uh, sure,” he says, returning to Earth from the UFO in orbit. You see his sweet little blond eyebrows flicker above his aviators as he blinks a bunch of times. “Actually, I got another surprise for y’all…”

 

* * *

 

**Kanaya: Participate in live beta test.**

 

“This,” Dave announces, with drama and ceremony that seems to you worthy of the unveiling of a formula that will cure some sort of widespread fatal disease, “is the first playable build of the board game Dirk’s been workin’ on.”

“Oh my God, it’s actually _ready_?” Rose stares at him across the living room table. “He’s kept this mysterious project of his under absolute secrecy for six months. Terezi and I have been going out of our minds trying to find out what it is. She’s been starting to concoct conspiracy theories about it not existing at all and just being a ruse to drive us crazy.”

“Alright, well, that’s a fuckin’ great idea, I will make sure to pass that along to him,” Dave returns.  He tucks a grubcake slathered in a concerning blend of condiments into his meal tunnel. “He’s _way_ excited for this thing, this thing is like his baby, he has hand-reared this game himself, rocked it to sleep, fed it from a bottle, got up at all hours of the night when it was crying to change its diaper,”

“Was this game adopted, or did he somehow carry it inside his body for nine months and then expel it from one of his reproductive organs, as is customary for mammals?” You ask, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“Oh nah he used a surrogate. It was a fuckin’ sight to see, watchin’ this twenty-something lady walk around carryin’ a bunch of plastic pieces and note cards and rule documentation around in her uterus,”

Rose is looking at Dave in that very particular way that signifies that she is annoyed, but also kind of laughing on the inside - a mien expressive of something not quite sharp enough to be pitch, but more cutting than would normally be expressed towards one’s moirail. Their manner towards one another has a harder, more mocking edge than Sollux and Aradia’s endlessly vacillating pale-red connection, and yet more tender and playful than Nepeta and Equius’s endlessly tumultuous diamond. It is full of vitriol that neither you nor Rose would express in your own matespritship unless you were genuinely fighting, inching their toes over lines that the two of you know well not to cross and then dancing back to the safe side of them. But at the same time it is infinitely softer, more intimate, more vulnerable, than what you have with Feferi or Terezi has with John. Their human relationship defies the quadrants, unidentifiable, impossible to truly quantify for long, seeming sometimes to settle into one recognizable shape or another and then dissolving or morphing into something else, shifting from red to pale to black or intermediate hues that resemble no shade of romance you can understand.

But it is important to Rose. And so you observe it from outside, hoping to occasionally spot patterns in the constantly swirling watercolors of their love, that may teach you something about her.  
  
The prospect of being invited _into_ that connection baffles and intimidates you, but you dearly want to comprehend it, so you are steeling yourself and pressing forward.

“The birth must have been very difficult,” Rose is saying, watching with interest as Dave pulls everything out of the box and begins setting it up. “Were there complications?”

He nods. “It was a c-section, actually,”

“...I am suddenly questioning whether I actually understand the mammalian reproductive process as well as I thought I did,” you muse aloud.  
  
“I’ll give you a hands-on refresher later, dear,” Rose says, without missing a beat, pausing for a moment to give you the filthiest pair of concupiscent eyes you’ve ever seen. Roxy explodes into perverted cackles, her eyebrows undulating so hard you have to wonder if it’s painful. You can feel the dermal layer of your face filling with green. Nothing in your relatively brief existence had even begun to prepare you for Roxy Lalonde’s shamelessness.

“You gonna give her a guided tour of your birth canal, Rose?” Dave doesn’t look up from his mental tabulation, counting an impressive pile of small plastic discs in various colors out of the box and comparing them to an inventory list. “Those Crockercorp cameras are gettin’ crazy small, mount one on the tip of her dick and go for a stroll,”  
  
Roxy has one hand clamped over her mouth, a torrential flow of furious giggles threatening each moment to breach their containment and pour over the conversation, drowning you in a flash flood of overwhelming Lalondian mirth and partially chewed grubcake. Rose is more composed, but her eyebrows are in grave danger of disappearing into her white-gold hair, seemingly shocked at the depths to which her matesprit-moirail-kismesis-ecto-hatchmate will sink, despite their long association.You attempt to distract the humans from this line of thought. “What is a c-section?”

“A caesarian-section,” Rose says, handing you a kerberry. You pierce the skin with one of your fangs, as is your habit, allowing the sweet-sour juice to fill your mouth. You don’t really get nourishment out of eating ordinary food, but at times you enjoy the taste. “It’s when a human has difficulty giving birth to an infant, so a doctor surgically cuts it out of her womb.”

“Oh!” you blink, not having been under the impression that humans also practiced such violent means of extraction, as you were obliged to do with your lusus. “I didn’t realize that human medical professionals bore such a weighty responsibility. They mu-”  
  
“Dave,” Rose cuts in, abruptly, her voice loaded with incredulity. “What is this?”  
  
“Huh?”  Dave pauses in the process of counting out several thick sheafs of what looks like human currency, though you do not recognize the color or the issue.  
  
“ _What_ exactly do you and your ‘bro’ think you’re trying to pull, here? Is this a deliberate attempt to destroy my marriage?” You straighten up, astonished. All Dave has done is unfold the playing field for the game, which looks similar to many other horizontal plane diversions you have seen in which the contestants move small tokens representative of themselves around a (usually square) field of play, encountering obstacles and events based on which square they find themselves on. “This looks an _awful_ lot like Monopoly.”  
  
You stare at her in bafflement, hoping that she can envision the metaphorical surprise noodles flashing above your head. “Rose, what are you talking about?”  
  
“Everyone knows that Monopoly is the fastest way currently known to science to destroy one’s relationships to the people you play it with.” (You didn’t know this.) “I would have thought that as a Hero of Time you would be less cavalier with artifacts whose presences _accelerate entropy_ .”  
  
“Hey now,” Dave holds up his hands defensively. “Y’ever played it?”  
  
“No,” Rose says, “because I value the connections I have with my fellow sentient beings.”  
  
Roxy coughs. “Yeah, I mean. The Batterwitch actually made it the national sport once she took over? It was supposed to make you good at dealing with money or something.”  
  
You regard the box and the stacks of counters and faux currency with newfound alarm and suspicion. “Okay, yeah, that’s fair, and also super screwed up, like, wow-” Dave says, blanching.  
  
(“Yes,” Rose adds, “it’s no wonder our alpha selves were incapable of averting that world’s demise, with such horrible weapons of division and social violence deployed against us.”)  
  
“-but it’s all good, because this ain’t Monopoly. Actually now that I think about it that makes how into this thing Dirk’s been make a lot more sense. This is actually, like, a direct response to that whole fuckfest, I’m pretty sure.”  
  
“...alright, this I have to see.” Rose leans over the table, scrutinizing the contextless play materials as if she expects to be able to sift knowledge from them by sight alone. You are very confused.  
  
“Dope.” Dave says, and starts dealing out currency as though you were playing cards. “Rox, chip me. So we all start with two hundred, I’ll be the bank this first time…”

 

* * *

 

The game seems reasonably straightforward, though a bit worrying in theme once you get going. Gameplay consists of moving your playing pieces (Dave saved you the icon of a small metal thimble, which you are rather touched by) around a square board, in accordance with rolls on a pair of six-sided die. The board is divided up into scoring regions, each of which scores a certain amount per turn. These apparently represent different lawnrings or hivestems, which can be occupied and their score per turn added to yours at the cost of accumulating ‘unhappiness tokens’ on them, which reduces their income per turn. There are also cards that produce special effects, most of which allow you to manipulate these systems. You look at your hand. You currently have ‘Joy Injection’, which will increase the amount of happiness in one of your occupied territories, ‘Informational Warfare Campaign’, which will increase the _unhappiness_ in another player’s territories, or ‘Disrupt Industry’, which allows you to siphon off some amount of another player’s income per turn. Each card - and the game as a whole, for that matter - displays very strange, foreboding, stylized drawings of cartoonishly depicted human highblood-equivalents performing disturbing acts of social sabotage and manipulation on vulnerable lowbloods.  
  
You are not certain which is more unsettling; the imagery of the game, or how quickly Rose is taking to it.  
  
Once presented with a contest, of any kind, Rose plays only to win, using any means necessary and without mercy, and this game of Dirk’s in which you take the role of oppressors is no exception. The entire experience is making you mildly uncomfortable - but Dave and his sibling are apparently very excited about this, and you don’t want to bring them down. You find it a more valuable use of your time to stay quiet and consider your fellow players than to put all that much effort into your strategy.  
  
You are seated between Rose and Roxy, and across from Dave. You hope you are being discreet as you observe him. It’s hard to tell with his eyes constantly concealed by his sun-repellent lens armature. You have never given any serious thought to him in a romantic sense - he’s seemed pitiable at times, particularly when you first met on the meteor and was even more anxious and easily-startled than he is today, but you were busy being interested in Rose at the time, and in any case it quickly became apparent that he was spoken for in the pale quadrant by your new prospective matesprit. Once or twice it seemed as though he and Karkat might possibly need mediation, but that atmosphere dissipated relatively fast. And concupiscently, well, he was just not on your radar, so to speak. You don’t really consider boys appealing in that sense, it has simply never occurred to you. Your fantasies and nightdreams always involved either you as a rainbow drinker feasting upon some unwilling young lady, or as said young lady being feasted upon.

It is very difficult to imagine Dave feasting erotically upon anyone, even if his ability to feast in the literal sense, upon victuals, seemingly knows no bounds. (The grubcakes and cheeses are rapidly disappearing down his gullet.) Dave is a supremely gifted warrior (or at least he was during your journey) but you have never been particularly intimidated by him. You have always (like all trolls) considered unconsciously the threat posed by those around you. Rose, of course, is an extremely dangerous and fearsome presence, with her purpleblood-like aesthetic and large rumblespheres (you did not realize for quite some time that she had no idea just how threatening she seemed), and while she is somewhat vulnerable at close range, she possesses an uncompromising ruthlessness worthy of any troll. (It is an embarrassing truth that this aura is a very large contributor to how attractive you find her.) Terezi you know to be a _terrifying_ opponent who almost never displayed how formidable she can be once your original session ended, due to her moirail’s seemingly immense pacifying influence. Gamzee is, or was, completely unreadable, and so you were simply forced to be on high alert around him no matter what the situation.

Dave, though, possesses considerable strifing ability - greatly in excess of Karkat and most of your cohort - but you have never doubted that you could take him if you had to. He lacks his moirail’s killer instinct. He is skilled in violence, but takes no pleasure in it. He flinches when moved against aggressively, he hesitates when he thinks victory is at hand, neglecting to act decisively to finish a fight.

You don’t make these observations based on suspicion or on any intent to actually fight any of them. (Well, other than Gamzee.) It’s just instinct. You collect and record and rank them as an underlying function of your mind. Every troll does it. You could never raise a weapon against Rose, you know that for a fact - but you still know, roughly, what your chances would be if you ever did. (Not good, is the answer. Chainsaw or no chainsaw, you do not happen to be the god tier Sylph of Space.) It’s like a computer running a background process.

(The most dangerous person on the meteor, of course, was Vriska.)

Dave is passing out pieces. A new round has begun, so he is depositing score counters and unhappiness tokens on various sectors of the board and into the inventories of the four of you. Rose is accumulating an impressive pile of both the former and the latter.

You inspect his face while he is focused on dealing. He looks stoic, impassive, more like he appeared on the surface when you first met him. You have since learned that this state is easy, quick for him to fall back on, but that it is very simple to disrupt. Brittle, Rose called him once. That is the correct word for him, for the armor he wears. Karkat’s is spiky and quick to lash out, like a suit of thorns. Dave’s is as impenetrable to look at as the lenses he wears, but distorts and cracks at even minor pressure. Having a task to concentrate on seems to help him maintain it.

His features are … delicate, even by human standards. They resemble Rose’s, just slightly. You’re reminded, suddenly, of the almost-resemblance between you and Porrim, or Karkat and Kankri. Is that what being ‘related’ means, to humans? Being … not made in one another’s image, exactly, but sewn from the same pattern? He has exactly the same fine, white-gold hair, too, and the same chaotic pattern of dermal blotches - what they call ‘freckles’ - scattered across his face and disappearing beneath his shirt.

He’s scruffy, though. Unkempt. His blunt human claws are worn and slightly ragged, his hair is ruffled and tangled. His lips are chapped. You consider what he might look like with that hair brushed and conditioned, his skin moisturized, perhaps his nails filed?

You suddenly realize that Dave has stopped dealing, and that all three of them are looking at you. Roxy’s eyes are flitting back and forth between you and Dave excitedly. You cough, embarrassed. “So, uhm, what are our totals for the round?” You push your piles of tokens around awkwardly in front of you.  
  
“Uh. If you’re done lookin’ at me like you got a reservation to chow down on my windpipe at dinnertime, yeah, uh, I get six, Rox gets four, you get five, and Rose gets twelve. And, here’s profits,” He passes out several sheaves of counterfeit bills. Rose’s is, again, much larger than anyone else’s. You wonder if you should be taking this more seriously.

You take your turn, and, predictably, the dice favor the Light player in the room. Your thimble is deposited on one of Rose’s heavily invested sectors, requiring you to pay a steep fare. You look through your hand - you have no special cards that will allow you to get out of this situation, and you have just under the amount of money needed to meet Rose’s demand. “I fold,” you say, pushing your cards and banknotes forwards.

“Y’know this isn’t poker,” Dave says. “And you can always go into debt, or take out a loan from somebody-”

“No _thank_ you.” You do not need this to be any more stressful.

The game only lasts two more rounds, Rose sweeping across the board and rapidly absorbing the others into her growing corporate empire. Dave resists for as long as he can, but appears to be treading water. Roxy, you notice, seems to have given up entirely.

Your brow furrows. You have never known Roxy to back down from a challenge. But now she just goes through the motions, even more indifferent than you were, rushing through her turns heedless of the damage Rose inflicts on her. She apparently considers her new position camped out behind the instruction booklet much more important. Her vibrant pink ganderbulbs flick back and forth between the pamphlet and the board again and again, her focus completely absorbed by it.  
  
Roxy, you think, is onto something.  
  
She and Rose have two different strains of the same sickness, so to speak (not that you would ever seriously refer to it as a sickness, as you love it so much in both of them) - the endless thirst to understand. For Rose, it is a constant state of being, an addiction more alluring than any human soporific could ever be, drifting endlessly from one fixation to the next. Sometimes it takes just a week for her to tire of any one subject, sometimes it holds her interest for whole months as her gluttonous intellect gorges itself on facts and histories and ideas. She reads, and reads, and reads, and is fascinated by anything deep enough to need to be learned, and in the evenings you sit in your chair in your communal respiteblock, and sew, and you soak up her excitement at her current fixation until your pusher threatens to burst with how much you love her.

(You spend months at a time in the brooding caverns, devoting yourself to the care and raising and placement of infant trolls, and sometimes Rose joins you there, but sometimes she doesn’t, distracted by study or work or carapacian politics. And in those times, when you come back to your cell after hours of screeching wigglers and bites from tiny fangs and treating injuries and mutations, exhausted and sore, your greatest pleasure is opening your husktop to find a veritable novel’s worth of scrolling purple messages waiting for you, expounding the endless intrigues of whatever has attracted her attention this time.)

Roxy is different. Roxy is happy, carefree, always full of laughter and flirtation and excitement,  wanton and exuberant where Rose is restrained and demure. You owe her the world - you can never truly repay what is due her, from you and from all of trollkind - but you were surprised and quietly elated by how easily the two of you connected despite the awe with which you regard her. You have different approaches to it, but she seems to enjoy almost every exposure she has to this world’s society just as you do, most likely on account of your similarly isolated early lives. You have spent many a lovely (if somewhat bewildering) day and night exploring neighborhoods and commercial squares and the strange corners of the internet, the two of you drinking in the infinitely diverse experiences that this new Earth has to offer.

And every now and then in your explorations, Roxy encounters something that catches her fancy. Where Rose’s hunger to understand is almost indiscriminate, Roxy’s only shows its face every now and then - but when it does, it is utterly single-minded in its focus. That is the expression you see in her face now as she stares intensely at the instruction booklet. She is on the _trail_ of something, like a barkbeast following its nose. She is sinking her fangs into it and she has no intention of letting go until she gets when she wants.

Your interest in this bizarre, troubling game increases drastically. You have never regretted following Roxy to the conclusion of one of her obsessive, analytical thought-journeys. (And, you recall, it was devised by Dirk, whose closest friend was Roxy.)

Rose wins a resounding victory on the next turn, observing the capitulation of her remaining opponents with her hands folded in front of her. Only the very slightest upward curve in the farthest corner of the seam of her mouth betrays that she feels any satisfaction, that her triumph was anything other than a simple thought exercise. Roxy’s eyes are shining. Dave looks unfazed. You feel as though there is a joke you are not getting.

Dave pulls out the scorecard, and everyone tallies up their final earnings. Rose frowns as she runs her finger down the chart, and you peer over to follow her gaze. Rose’s overwhelming victory, as it is reckoned by this game, is in fact just a mediocre passing grade - and barely even that. She has succeeded, but not in any exceptional way, which you know that, to your perfectionist matesprit, is actually worse than losing.

“...wait.” Rose frowns, her contemplative ogle scanning back and forth over the card. “How - the totals don’t _go_ that high. Even if the numbers came up all in your favor and you expanded even faster in the first three turns, how would you-”

“Wanna play again?” Dave says, expertly raising a sly eyebrow.  
  
“Hell yes,” Roxy bursts out, almost before he’s finished speaking. Rose looks taken aback for a moment and then nods, sharply.

You follow suit. At this point you know that either you can play with them, or you can sit in the mealblock and wait for them to finish. “I’ll refill the lemonfizz,” you say, picking up the almost-empty pitcher, “If you continue to inhale flattened triangular baked corn at this pace I think you’re going to need it.”

 

* * *

 

The second game plays out much differently.

Roxy takes you aside while you are restocking the refreshments and explains her plan of action. A sly smile comes to your face as you understand the implications. You decide to troll Dirk later and discuss this project of his.

Rose is bamboozled at the outset, when you, Roxy, and Dave refuse to actually claim any territory. You instead focus on containing her, sharing resources and opportunities amongst yourselves and hoarding as many special cards as possible. It is difficult, and hinges on extremely narrow escapes - you avoid landing on game-ending spaces by a single square several times. On two separate occasions, one of you actually _does_ land on a property of Rose’s that demands high enough rent to wipe you out - so all three of you pool your money to pay the fee and keep them in the game.

And all the while, more and more score counters are accruing on the unclaimed properties, unhindered by the unhappiness penalty of being under a player’s yoke.

What Roxy has determined is that taking territory on the board is actually the least efficient way to play the game. The only way to reach the heights of the scorecard, and to truly succeed within the game’s measurement, is to allow the various sectors and neighborhoods to flourish on their own. They continue, she explained to you, to accrue score counters regardless of whether any player has claimed them - and then, late in the game, once stacks and stacks of them have been heaped on the board, you start playing your stockpile of special cards.

“So here’s the thing,” Roxy says, as her turn comes around, locking eyes with Rose. “All the spaces that don’t belong to anyone? They all actually count as one player. Which means, One-” she holds up the pointer finger of one hand, “they have a score. Two,” she adds another finger, “you can ally with ‘em. Three-” a third rises, “you can _play cards on ‘em._ ”

“Yep,” Dave says, “but you wouldn’t, normally, ‘cause if you played good cards on ‘em, you’d be jacking up everyone else’s profits along with your own, and if you played bad cards on ‘em you’d be screwing yourself along with everyone else.”  
  
“Yea,” Roxy nods vigorously, grinning a wide and frightfully attractive grin, “Which is why you leave ‘em alone, so it isn’t takin’ money outta your pocket.” She produces a special card from her hand, that multiplies the score counters of a particular player. “But I did all the math for the whole board, and you can’t actually get up to the top of the scorecard by taking properties yourself. So you leave ‘em alone, you let ‘em grow…”  
  
She slaps two copies of the card down. Dave begins transferring enormous numbers of score counters onto the board. You play your own, and raise your eyebrows as Roxy rattles off numbers much too high for you to compute in your pan on the spot and Dave obediently piles the tokens high. “I am starting to understand why Dirk felt the need to include so many score counters in the box,” you muse out loud, eyeing Rose’s face with mild amusement as the reality of what Roxy is doing spreads over her expression. Her turn is next, and she attempts to mitigate the damage, but it is too late, and then Dave’s turn comes up, and he puts down his own score multiplier cards.  
  
Once Roxy has moved to form an alliance between your three-way pact and what Dave has begun referring to as the Free State, you make the final tally, and an astonishing _ninety_ tokens are present on the board. Profits _flood_ into your team’s coffers, and Rose cannot compete. Within another two rounds, she sets down her hand and surrenders.  
  
Dave is looking extraordinarily smug. There is quiet around the table. Rose looks at the board for a long time, occasionally reaching for her drink and sipping it quietly. Roxy is beaming.

“...it’s a metaphor,” Rose says, at last, looking up at Dave.  
  
“ _Yeah_ , it is,” Dave says, slinging his arm over the back of his chair, “I can sense your panties disintegrating already.” He colors, suddenly, and glances over at you, looking alarmed.

“So can I,” you say, tilting your head and offering a small smile. “Dissolving nylon has a very distinctive odor.” Roxy chokes on a mouthful of lemonfizz, thumping her chest as she gasps with laughter, and it is now Rose’s turn to blush furiously. (You are positing that assisting Dave with his endless pitch-lite campaign of one-upsmanship against Rose will endear you to him more quickly.)

“As I was _saying_ ,” Rose grouses over Roxy’s wheezing, wet cackles, “it’s a metaphor for the struggle between corporatocracy and social democracy. Collecting the economies of the board under one central authority and levying all the wealth for yourself allows one single victor, but gets in the way of actually attaining a high enough score to meet the significant victory conditions. The way forward is to take a light touch and permit these individual economies to flourish and keep the fruits of their own labor, - and then combine your resources for mutual benefit and protection.”  
  
“Yeah,” Dave says, sweeping up the playing pieces, “you got it faster than I did, honestly. It’s really high concept, I dunno how well it’s gonna work.”  
  
“The metaphor needs some refinement,” Rose says, thoughtfully. “You understood it first, though.” she looks up at Roxy. “What helped you get it?”  
  
Roxy shrugs, rubbing the back of her head, looking a tad flustered. “Uh. Well. Lmao. I didn’t? I sorta started getting it towards the end. But I just, like, did the math. This was the best way to win. Based on the board, and the numbers, and stuff.”  
  
You all stare at her. You are amazed; the strategy of this game, and the message contained within it, is dependent on understanding of several quite complex, overlapping mathematical factors - complexities which Roxy appears to have comprehended in about half an hour. She makes it terribly easy to forget the power of the thinkpan concealed behind her lovely face, an intellect that comprehends the intricacies of ectobiology and dimensional transit, that can hold within itself computer programs of staggering intricacy and the mind-warping ambiguities of the Void.

“I see,” you nod. “thus, the message is expressed literally through the mechanical rules of the game, as well as through the imagery and description of the pieces and playing field.”

Dave continues to wax poetic about his brother’s artistic accomplishment while he packs up the game. You can tell that Rose is beginning to disappear inside her own cranial cavity, as she stares down at the board with a ruminatory expression. But before you can intervene, Dave jumps in. “Ok, well, that was a lot,” he says. “That’s enough masterfully layered social commentary for one day. I’m tired. Who’s ready for some motherfuckin’ _soaps._ ”  
  
Everyone perks up, all at once, as though a barkbeast whistle had been blown.

 

* * *

 

**Dave: Enjoy romantic drama with friends.**

If, a couple years ago, a future version of yourself had appeared and told you that the one thing that could unite an entire extended association of apocalypse-survivor bros that spans three different species and contains the likes of both John Egbert and Kanaya Maryam was Downton Abbey, you’re pretty sure you would have demanded to know who sent you, and assumed that someone or something was trying to trick you into creating a bad timeline.

You are more than pretty sure, actually, because that’s exactly what happened. It was too tall an order for you to fit in your noggin. It was actually, unless you remember wrong, the one singular time in which you have not done what your future self told you to do.  
  
As always, it turns out future-you was right. You had just been trying to save you the embarrassment of Rose and Karkat showing you up by proving it was a good idea, maybe put you on a path of ironically enjoying it at first so that you could pretend you had unironically liked it the whole time. Anyway a lot of really silly stuff happened and you ended up on a couch at Rose’s house, everyone completely fucked up on shitty supermarket-brand cherry soda with your arms around Karkat while both of you sobbed your eyes out at the concert episode when Matthew walks in. (It was a beautiful moment, okay? You refuse to be blamed. It would be like not crying at the dog in Futurama. You’re not made of stone _._ Rose tries to give you shit about it but you saw her dabbing at her own eyes with a hanky, she can’t fuckin’ fool you.)

There are two incredible things about Downton Abbey. The first is the sheer vertical universality of its appeal. It’s not that you’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like Downton Abbey, no, no, sitting around watching 20th century British douchebags agonize over their romance drama bullshit isn’t everyone’s cup of darjeeling. What’s amazing is that you’ve never met a _type_ of person who doesn’t like it. Fucking _Equius_ was around one time while you were watching and he ended up sitting around watching half a season because he was so impressed by how ‘proper and dignified’ Carson the butler is. (You almost threw out the couch cushion he sat on. Thing was soaked clean through with sweat like it went in the dunk tank.)

The second thing is that you cannot fucking figure out why anyone likes it. You don’t know why _you_ like it. It’s a show about rich people who eat dinner and worry about things that don’t matter, have never mattered, and will never matter to any living thing in all of existence, while the hired help slaves away in their bunker-like subterranean Prole Containment Unit (you’re pretty sure the guys who actually go off to fight in World War 1 have more living space in the trenches than they do in this goddamn place) and spend their lives cooking, doing laundry, and marinating happily in their crippling Stockholm syndrome towards the assholes upstairs.

(Dirk has made all of these points to you, exhaustively. He enjoys loudly denouncing Downton Abbey as ‘Royalist Propaganda That is Probably A Paradox Echo of The Batterwitch’s Reign and Exists To Corrupt The Thoughts Of Free-Thinking Sentients.’ You honestly aren’t sure how much of that is for real and how much is him covering for the fact that he writes 80,000-plus words kinky Thomas/Dr. Clarkson blackrom fics under a decoy username. He is in serious danger of passing a thousand subscribers.)

But, here you are, on your way through Series Four, reclining between Kanaya and Rox, drinking raspberry seltzer and teetering on the edge of your fucking seat over whether the one dude who the jerk-face oldest daughter wants to bang is going to be able to pull off his complicated gambit involving moving to Germany so he can divorce his crazy wife so he can marry the jerk-face oldest daughter. Downton Fucking Abbey is the ultimate proof of the concept that if you pay attention to something dumb for long enough, your ironic enjoyment of it eventually produces a feedback loop ouroboros effect that blurs the line between love and ironic hate until you can’t tell them apart anymore, and even if you don’t like the thing, the feeling you have towards it is _equivalent_ to liking it. It is not love, but it will taste the same as love in the recipe. You think that you _knew_ this when you were a kid, like, intellectually, but you never truly _understood_ it until you watched Downton Abbey.

“Oh man,” you say, “Good Guy Bates,”  
  
“Good guy Bates!” the others chorus, Roxy gazing dreamily at the sort of dumpy-looking guy on the screen who walks with a limp and has way too much chin, as he helps out a dude who’s fallen on hard times pay off his debts by pretending to be paying him back for something.  
  
You hold up a bingo card and cross off ‘Good Guy Bates’ with a black Sharpie. Rose leans over from where she’s snuggled up on Kanaya’s other side and looks at your card. “I think there’s an argument to be made that ‘Good Guy Bates’ should be the free space.” she says.  
  
“We agreed on this.” you shoot back. “‘They ring the bell for the staff’ is the free space.”  
  
“They ring the bell for the staff in the _opening theme._ ”  
  
“That’s _why_ it’s the free space!” You pop a slice of gourmet troll cheese into your mouth. Whoo, that stuff _kicks_.

Rose makes a face. Making Rose make that face is apparently what keeps her coming back to you. Interacting with and being annoyed by you seems to scratch some kind of itch in her brain that she needs scratched, so you try to create it as often as possible. (She looks really fuckin’ cute when she makes that face.) “Alright.” she says. “But Bates has exactly one setting, and ‘Good Guy Bates’ is it. Every scene in which Bates appears counts as a ‘Good Guy Bates’ moment, because Bates is not so much a man as he is an elemental of pure good and light that has for some inexplicable reason decided to incarnate on this plane to work for an out-of-touch earl in the 1910s.”

“Moirallegiance is a mysterious thing,” Kanaya intones. (She ships the out-of-touch earl and Bates in a diamond _hard_.)

“Yeah,” Roxy sighs, obviously not paying attention because she was too busy wishing she was Bates’s wife Anna so she could ride that middle-aged previously-married dick. Bates is her favorite character, because ‘hes dreamy’. (Rose’s is the old lady played by Professor McGonagall, ‘Because she gives precisely zero fucks.’ Kanaya’s is the earl’s wife, ‘Because She Is Sensible And Well-Dressed’. Yours is Molesley, the guy Bates is bailing out right now, because he is God’s punching bag and you find that relatable.) Rox is leaning her head on your shoulder. She is making you _super_ aware of her extremely nice boob squished against your arm and her _really_ soft hair tickling your cheek and how she’s got those long gorgeous legs stretched out on the table in front of you making it _extremely_ obvious how tight those yoga pants of hers are.

In the name of at least finishing the episode you distract yourself by looking over at Kanaya and Rose. Honestly, how the fuck does Kanaya do it? She’s wearing a generico top and a blue skirt. She took off her heels, even, but somehow she still manages to look like she’s getting ready to go out on the town with Rose to somewhere super sophisticated to drink artisanal teas with an average of twelve syllables in the names. You’re lounging around having fun chilling and being together again, not gearing up for the cotillion like these fucksticks on the TV. This is a place to wear sweatpants and t-shirts. Maybe this is Kanaya’s version of sweatpants and t-shirts?? You’re pretty sure Kanaya has never touched a pair of sweats in her life. If she tried to put on a pair of sweats there would be a matter-antimatter reaction that would destroy one or both of them and also obliterate the surrounding twenty blocks in an orgiastic explosion of textile incompatibility.

Rose is wearing a halter and jean shorts, she looks good, but what you really notice is that she has a cup of tea. You know the smell of that tea. That’s her special super-enriched chamomile blend. She makes it for when she has a particularly spicy evening (or morning, or afternoon, or midnight) planned. It’s a muscle relaxant, and it makes her back door a lot more agreeable to being opened.

You swallow. Boy, you’re actually gonna do this, huh.

Kanaya’s talking. Oh god what is she talking about. She’s looking at your bingo card. Now she’s looking at you. “Sorry, what?”

“Whatcha lookin’ at, Davey?” Roxy asks, right over her shoulder. You can feel her breath on your ear.

“Uh. Nothin’,” you mumble. “What were you sayin’, Kanaya?”

“I was saying, all we need now is ‘Lady Mary is a shit’ or ‘Lord Grantham talks about how much he loves Downton’ for a bingo. This one filled up very fast.”  
  
“Ooh,” Roxy says, looking up at the screen. “Does ‘Matthew wants to modernize the estate’ count if it’s after he’s dead, in a letter?”

“I see absolutely no reason not to permit posthumous fill-ins.” Rose says. “And anyway, it doesn’t affect any currently-in-progress bingos.” You have not absorbed much anything that has happened in the show for like five minutes. Your boner is occupying a bunch of low-level CPU cycles on account of Rox snuggling her hot self up to you. Maybe trying to delay the inevitable is a waste of time. Rose always gets what she wants sooner or later, and probably not even the siren call of _utterly_ inconsequential post-Edwardian romantic drama can restrain her thirst for long.

The episode is wrapping up. The disc cycles and the intro starts up again as the next episode gets going. They’re throwing a party, there’s some _other_ dude there who wants to bang the jackass oldest daughter, the whole nine yards. You really aren’t paying attention anymore. It’s impossible to ignore how sandwiched you are between a bunch of really gorgeous women.

Your hear some noises from the other side of Kanaya. (That seriously is how you have to think about it. Jesus, she just has not stopped growing, has she? You and Rose are occupying opposite sides of the Great Wall of Kanaya and you have to get carrier pigeons to pass messages between the two of you at night when the guards change shifts. You are West Berlin and Rose is East Berlin. Mister Gorbachev, tear down this vampire.) They are little rustles and hums.

Rose is leaning over a little, kissing Kanaya on the arm and neck. Part of you imagines her with Gomez’s little pencil mustache, smooching her way up Kanaya’s arm. ‘Kanaya, you spoke French! Muah, muah, muah…’

No, wait. Rose has the French name, it would be her speaking French. Oh hey there someone is kissing your cheek.

Roxy is leaving a little trail across the side of your face. You stiffen as she walks her lips up to your ear- and then takes the shell of your ear between them, nips at the round edge, starts running her tongue into the outer crevasse. Your boner comes to full activation.

She notices, as her fingers start playing with the band of your sweats. You turn your head to meet her halfway and her face smushes against yours. She grins as she fits her lips over yours. Her other hand tangles in your hair and starts running it between her fingers. You feel a weight on your thigh as she lifts one of those long, toned legs over yours and dangles it in your lap. You shudder. Jesus, you are a lucky man.

She goes lower. Her face slots into the corner of your neck and shoulder and her lips make landfall. Every hair on the back of your neck stands up, very similar in style to the current status of your ouija wand. You slant your body backwards with her weight and your shoulder bumps against Kanaya’s. Kanaya is making strained noises. “Ohh. Rose…”

“Did you miss me?” Rose is whispering.

“Every day and night,” Kanaya says back, and does something that makes Rose gasp, the tiniest little hint of a moan at the edge of it, a _magnificent_ fucking noise that makes you even harder, if that was possible.

Then you find out that it is _for sure possible_ . You go iron rod goddamn stiff in the spine and the schlong as one of Roxy’s soft hands sneaks down your pants and gets ahold of your dick. You squeak - in the manliest, most attractive way possible, obviously - as she squeezes it a few times. “‘sa good question, Davey,” she murmurs, “you miss us on the road? You meet any other gals or guys out in the wide world?” Then she brings her fingers up to her mouth and sucks on them for a sec, and then goes back in, pumping you up and down with her lubed-up hand. Your dick is _aching_ but it’s still a relief to have some of that painful internal pressure soothed by her touch.

“‘s another trap que-question,” you mumble, “even if I did, am I gonna say they’re hotter than you?”

“I mean ya could,” she says, “but your momma told you it’s not cool to lie,” Her hand squeezes your shaft lightly. “I know ‘cause I’m tellin’ you, right now, lmao,” she pronounces all four letters, like always, still jerking you off, her hand sliding up and down, up and down, you feel like you can perceive every goddamned molecule of her hand on your pecker, every throbbing vein quivering and super-sensitive.

“Maybe I’ve made out with a couple folks here’n there,” you manage, your hips twitching up into Rox’s hand.

“Yeaaahhh?” she says, musically, you can basically hear the the flirty little tilde at the end of her question. “Tell me about ‘em.”

Rose clears her throat behind you. “Maybe you can hear about Dave’s other conquests on your own time, when it’s just the two of you. You can make a romantic evening out of it. I think he has more immediate concerns just now, though.”

“I think we should retire to the respiteblock,” Kanaya says, through clenched fangs it sounds like.

“Aw, really,” you quip, “why the rush? We gotta find out if this maid blackmails the chauffeur into marryin’ her,” An arm scoots under your legs and hoists your off the couch. Kanaya has picked up you in one arm and Rose in the other. Rose looks pleased as punch.

“You make a compelling argument,” you say.

 

* * *

 

**Rose: Get what you want.**

“So _that_ ’s a human bulge.”

“Pffff, Kan,” Roxy snorts, “you can’t fool me, I know you’ve seen human porn.”

Dave continues to blush. You laugh. Those were … awkward evenings at times, but the entertaining memories outweigh the mortifying ones. “Yes, of course.” Kanaya replies, “This is my first time seeing one in person, though.”

“Okay for the last time,” Dave mumbles, “‘s not a bulge. It’s a dick. Bulges are a thing trolls have. I have a dick, which is not a tentac-hhnnng,”

Roxy has her hand in his pants again. “I have long since given up objecting when you refer to my bulge as a penis and my nook as a ‘pussy,’” your wife-sprit huffs, “The least you can do is afford me the same courtesy.” Dave is making some extremely endearing sounds as Roxy pulls his sweats down. He is _extremely_ hard.

You feel good. Your stomach is full of fluttering moths, but your body feels loose and relaxed. You’re excited. You extract a bottle of lube from your sylladex and hand it to Dave and Roxy, and slide your shorts and panties off with your thumbs hooked into the waistband.

“Ok Rox,” Dave is saying, “You’re our sex engineer, how we doin’ this,” He goes crimson in the face and momentarily loses the power of speech as Roxy begins running her slick hand up and down his dick.

“Rosie you turn around, get on Kan’s lap,” she says, gesturing with her free hand, “you two get started - then, Kan you lay down.”

You speedily see the logic in her plan and help Kanaya pull off her skirt and underwear, settling yourself atop her thighs. Her nook is already green and swollen, little runnels of genetic material sliding down from the edges of her sheath. It takes very little additional stimulation to make the little chitinous seams split open, allowing the full length of her bulge to slide out. It writhes and drips hungrily, a _beautiful_ sound tearing itself free of Kanaya’s mouth along with the wild, musical _chirr_ that emanates from her torso.

You don’t waste any time and you spread your legs, and the tendril plunges into you, working its way inside steadily with successive locomotive undulations. Kanaya clasps at your shoulders, her claws stinging pleasantly as her bulge burrows into you and starts to _flex_ , its rippling oscillations stroking and caressing your inner walls, deeper and more adroit than any finger or toy or human dick. Your bud pulses sympathetically with each throb of the alien organ. Gasps and moans are escaping from your mouth now, irrepressible, as they always do when your wife begins to fuck you in earnest.

Kanaya lays back on the bed, spreading out the entirety of her graceful, powerful frame out beneath you. You pull your shirt over your head and try to grope at the strap of your bra, but it’s difficult and obnoxious enough at the best of times and the ripples of her bulge fucking you are driving any semblance of manual dexterity from your fingers, so you’re stuck there, straining your arms and shoulder sockets, until Roxy’s fingers dart in and undo the clip, allowing your breasts to fall free. “Thanks,” you pant. Roxy is the hero of this whole undertaking, you swear. You’ll have to find a way to make it up to her.

Dave’s callused fingers settle on your midsection, slowing the rolling of your hips as your thirsty quim tries to draw Kanaya deeper in. At your urging he bends you over Kanaya’s prone form. He cradles your buttocks in his hands, massaging them, working a lube- covered thumb into you from behind to open you up and relax you even further. “Yes,” you whisper. “Yes,”

His cock slides in between your cheeks, rubbing up and down. “Yes _, yes,_ ” Kanaya’s grip on your arms stiffens, steadying you.

“I dunno,” Dave says, voice hoarse, “I’m thinkin’ maybe I’ll pass. Stickin’ my dick in an incredibly hot chick who is literally begging me to give it to her in the butt? Eh, I got some laundry to do, and I got these new picture frames that I wanna hang-”

“ _Dave_ ,” you hiss, trying and _almost_ entirely succeeding at keeping the desperation out of your voice.

“-and I got some minis to paint, and I _really_ need to get a start on alphabetizing my shitty alchemized DVD collection,”

“ _Dave!!_ ” you scream out, your voice breaking as your pussy starts to stretch and quiver, Kanaya’s seed gradually filling it.

“Yeahhhhh…. arright,” and he sinks the head of his cock into you.

The groan he releases as he slides into your ass betrays the want he feels beneath his flippancy. Your haunches tremble with Kanaya’s movements, but she holds you steady as Dave pushes his way in. He slips out, carefully, then back in again, tremors wracking your body as he sheathes himself in you to the hilt, you feel his hands tighten on your hips at the same time Kanaya’s are enfolding your torso, and your eyes fall closed.

Kanaya embraces you tightly in the world’s most bizarre horizontal hug as Dave starts moving in earnest, driving in and out of you with smooth, steady motions, and you lay your cheek against Kanaya’s rumblespheres, feeling the droning purr of her flushed affection reverberate through your body as you revel in the sense of being as intimate as physically possible with the most important people in your life. You pant shallowly, three sets of labored breathing overlapping in your ears. Dave and Kanaya compress your midsection between the two of them, you swear you can feel their respective phalluses pushing against one another _through_ you. Your moans build and build and build, your eyes roll in their sockets, the last thing you see before your eyelids slide shut is Roxy, one hand between her own legs, sliding up next to Kanaya and burying her other hand in her hair. Tremors roll through her body as Roxy runs her fingers over her sensitive scalp and the erogenous zone at the base of her horns, and the quake runs through her thrashing tentacle and the stimulation overtakes you and drowns your brain-

 

* * *

 

**Kanaya: Further familiarize yourself with alien physiology.**

The sound of Rose’s cries harmonize with your own subvocalizations. Her nook wrings your bulge like a sponge, drawing yet more slurry out of it with its lovely, hot, wet tightness even as the material you have already pumped into her flows and spurts out, painting your midsection and rolling down onto the sheets beneath you. (Thankfully, the concupiscent couch is prepared to survive such treatment, unlike the recuperation platforms Rose and Dave used to sleep on. The trolls of this world have had a few thousand years to perfect gene-slime-resistant fabric.) Roxy is panting from behind you, her claws scratching circuitous whorls of tingling, hot-cold sensation into your scalp and horns, sending the signals directly down to your bulge, which fucks Rose all the harder. Dave is huffing and puffing from behind Rose, his hands clasping her behind securely, his mouth hanging open as he thrusts into her slowly but steadily.

Rose is _lovely_ like this, her eyes almost completely shut, her barriers and emotional walls collapsed entirely, her large human mammaries heaving and swollen. She is laid across you at precisely the correct angle for the double-curve of her soft behind to appear, shaking back and forth just beyond her own head in your field of vision.

If Rose were a troll, you wonder if you and her together might _drown_ the mother grub in good, potent, red slurry. Inside her, when you plunge yourself completely into concupiscent passion, it almost feels like a solid stream of material flowing from your bulge, rather than the steady, repeated pulse-drips of a normal orgasm. Your tendril feels like it wants to burst, swollen and heavy with biological serendipity, and there is nothing you can do but tighten your grip on her shoulders and upper arms and continue to thrash, questing endlessly and sometimes, it seems, futilely, in search of enough friction from the rubbing of your bulge’s exterior and cilia against Rose’s inner walls to satisfy you, to draw the whole of the pail out of you.

Dave’s sunglasses fall onto your torso. You blink for a moment, surprised, and glance up. Dave looks terribly abashed. “Uh, sorry, I, uh, I forgot to take ‘em off,”

“Less talking, more fucking,” Rose snaps.

“Well,” you manage, only able to muster most of your usual precise manner of speech with your bulge deep inside Rose, “This answers a number of questions.”

“It does?!” The concern evident on Dave’s face is _highly_ incongruous on someone who is currently fucking a girl in the ass.

“Oh, yes, we are v-very often asked whether you keep them on w-while pailing,” you reply, “Rose insists on giving a di-different answer, every t-time, so I have n-never actually been s-sure,”

“Who is asking you about this shit??”

“You’d know if you spent more time in your kingdom’s court,” Rose wheezes, “the gossip mill is _insatiable_ ,”

“Sounds like someone else I know,” you smile. Rose laughs and hiccups.

Dave slows in his thumping into her ass, spasming one, two, three - five times total as he comes with a muffled cry. He steps backwards, pulling out of Rose and puffing for breath.

Her nook trembles and contracts around you with her own climax, wringing out another few dollops of jade, and Rose slumps on top of you, groaning. Your bulge doesn’t stop moving, continuing to work her expended nook, until Roxy, face ruddy and eyes wide, steps in and guides Rose off of you, allowing her to flop sideways onto the concupiscent couch. You sit up, not yet finished, your bulge still squirming and demanding more.

A hand paps your cheek briefly and then closes around your horn. You shudder. The hand is Roxy’s, she turns you to face where she is spreading herself on her stomach in the center of the concupiscent platform.

She opens her legs to you, and presents her nook.

 

* * *

 

**Roxy: Get what you deserve.**

_Man_ they’re gorgeous.

It’s not like this is totally unprecedented, like. You’ve dreamed about being with the people close to you before. A lot. Constantly. Ok basically all the time. And them being with each other. In all kinds of different permutations. You think about this a _lot_ tbh. It’s not your fault all your friends are so cute/hot/hot _and_ cute! The space behind closed eyes, you’ve come to recognize, is a perfect metaphor for the Void; a dark, secret place of infinite potential, where anything can exist as long as you can imagine it.

Being who and what you are, you make full use of this space, like a tiny portable laboratory where you can experiment with your Aspect, and use the infinite power of universal creation it offers to conjure hypothetical images of people taking their shirts off.

Then taking their pants off. Then taking your pants off.

And, of course, the most important lesson you had to learn as the Rogue of Void was that if something doesn’t exist, all that means is that it doesn’t exist _yet_. And, as you and Dirk know better than anyone, time is basically a fake thing that doesn’t have to happen in any specific order.

What you’re saying is that if you want to live in a world in which Rose and her hot wife and her cute BF are all banging together and involving you in the festivities, you are empowered to make that hypothetical a reality. Be the four-ways you want to see in the world. You are, like, definitely sure Barack Obama said that.

And now you have gone and put this whole thing together, you have reached out with your sexy, sexy hands and pulled all the pesky nothingness out of the idea of you and Rose and Dave and Kanaya touching butts, and you still haven’t _gotten_ anything out of it! Like, obvs this is the _hottest fucking thing ever_ and even if it ended right now you are gonna be getting yourself off for like a _month_ on the image of Rose getting railed from behind by Dave with that _amazing_ look on her face where all her hangups and worries and layers of cool dignified armor are just _melted_ off, and all you see is _her_ , happy and blissed-out and _perfect_....

But, like, you gotta get yours, too! You made this happen, shouldn’t you get to enjoy it??

She turns her head to look at you and those huge yellowgreen vampire eyes zoom in like you’re being lined up by a targeting computer that is locking in the most efficient trajectory by which to bone you. “Please,” she says, her perfect enunciation all torn up and hoarse, “ _Please, Roxy,_ ”

 _Boy_ that makes you wet. She’s the queen of all tops and she’s so polite that she’s the one begging _you_.

You roll over onto your belly and spread your legs, lifting your (stupendous) ass into the air. You give it just the tiiiiniest wiggle.

The bulge wiggles into you with one, two, three chilly inchworm ripples. Your whole body shakes and a dopey, blissy smile takes over your face. Kanaya doesn’t need to thrust, so she basically lays down on top of you, her hands on either side of your head as she kisses and nuzzles your neck. You can feel her sniffing at your artery while her tentadick thrashes inside you, fuck, you will _never_ get tired of this. She lays her hands over yours, lacing your fingers together from behind. Her lips close over your throat and you feel her fangs ghost across the surface of your skin. “God, Roxy,” she whispers, and your heart leaps and your clit pulses at the idea that it’s you that makes her that happy, _you_ , your lame self. You have never felt more wanted, more loved, more _worth it_ than when Kanaya does this, when she goes completely wild and takes you in every way, her bulge in you and her beautiful dainty hands wrapping you up and her fangs sucking up your blood...

“Do it,” you breathe, craning your neck and exposing the vein, like a delicious mouth-watering spread being laid out in front of her, “C’mon, Kan,”

“Oh, Roxy, dear,” she pants, somehow still saying real words in the right order while she’s fucking you so hard you feel like your clit’s going to _pop,_ “I shouldn’t indulge, it - it will be so awkward and messy later,”  
  
“Yeah,” you wheeze, curling your toes and bending your knees to wrap yourself around her, trying to pull her dick into you as far as humanly possible, “but it would be... _so... good... Come on, Kanny... just do it... come on... think about... how good... I’d taste... and how good... I’d feel,_ ”  
  
She hisses and then your neck stings for a sec and then everything just goes … cloudy … and soft … and it doesn’t matter anymore that you’re a worthless piece of crap who’s fooled everyone into loving her, none of that’s important. There’s just Kanaya, and her bulge fucking you, and both of you screaming, your own voice sounding like it’s coming from underwater, and the hot-cold coming from your pussy and the fuzzy relaxation coming from your neck, and you zone out... ****

* * *

 

**Dave: Take it home.**

Rose’s head is kind of rolling around on the top of her spine. You press a quick kiss to the corner of her mouth as you help her sit up against the back of a chair across from the bed. Then you grab a paper towel and spray some soap on it so you can clean your dick off. Rose has a clean booty, sure, but still. We live in a society. Then you sit down, both of you settling back to watch Kanaya fuck Roxy into the cushions. Jade genetic material drips from her pussy as she moves.  “You good?” you murmur, stroking her face and her hair.

“Mmm-hm,” she answers, in what you’re reasonably sure is the affirmative.

“...is Rox gonna be okay?” You know Kanaya wouldn’t hurt anyone, academically, but seeing her with her choppers dug into Roxy’s jugular like that is a little off-putting anyways.

She nods. “Mhm. Kanaya’s responsible. And anyway. It feels good.”

You get a glass of the lemon soda for each of you, stop and think for a moment, then fill the glass up to the brim and take it back for you to share.

You trade off taking sips. She swallows a big mouthful and then rests her head in the crook of your shoulder. “It’s a rainbow drinker ability, apparently,” she murmurs, “its original purpose long since irrelevant to their survival. This world’s scientists believe…” You kinda tune out. You’re having a hard time paying attention to anything that isn’t Roxy, rolling and screaming and drooling a little, her hands grabbing fistfuls of the sheets, apparently getting a glimpse of whatever the Nazis saw in the Ark of the Covenant in Kanaya’s dick judging by the look on her face.

Rose taps you on the cheek with a finger. “...you aren’t internalizing a word I’m saying, are you?”

“I’m kinda payin’ attention to Rox internalizing something else. Like, in the v-zone.”

She laughs and you can tell she’s mad that she laughed. “...that’s fair,” she grumps.

Kanaya starts licking at Roxy’s neck punctures like a cat. “There’s a natural procoagulant in her saliva, to make the punctures clot more or less immediately, so that nothing permanent happens to the target after being bitten.”

You suck the glass of lemonade dry while progressively more and more green slurry pools on the couch between Roxy’s hips. You can feel your dick starting to wake up again. Boy, that didn’t take long. “You coulda just said ‘yeah Rox is fine.’ Didja think I actually thought you guys invited me here so I could sit here while you get yourself off to Kanaya straight turning Rox into a mummy?”

“Of course not,” she says. “I know and you know and all of us know that Kanaya has never done anything straight in her life. As I was _saying_ ,” she talks over you laughing, “This world’s troll scientists believe that there was an intermediate period of troll -biological develvelopment, where trolls were on the cusp of sentience and independence, but … the mother grub still … had … mhm ... some control over their evolution,” Her voice starts to get weird and breathy and you look over. She’s rubbing at her clit while she explains. “And jadebloods’ survival was considered to be a high priority - they cared for the mother grub itself, ob-obviously, so it endowed the jadebloods… with the ability to s-sustain themselves off of other trolls, since some of them were no longer o-obeying orders… as well as abilities to help them hunt and s-subdue other t-trolls, such as … anaesthetic venom in their fangs...”

“Ha, ha,” You mumble, “you said ‘endowed’,”

She attempts to murder you with her eyes. She can’t really keep it up, though, she’s too turned on, and her protective coating of frost starts melting when you grin at her.

Kanaya’s sat herself back up and hauled Roxy onto her lap, her tentacock still fucking her, slower now but just as steady. Rox is gasping for breath, Kanaya’s arms squeezing her nipples, so overstimulated between the bite and the exhaustion of being fucked so hard for so long (and the blood loss, probably) that she looks ready to pass out.

“...so, like,” you say, putting the glass away into your ‘dex, “lemme see if I got this straight here. You’re jilling yourself off while you watch your wife, who is an alien who is also a vampire, bang your mom, who is also sort of your daughter, after she got done banging you at the same time as me, who is sort of your fuckbuddy but also sort of your brother.”

“That about sums it up, yes.” She’s starting to breathe harder now. You’re at half-mast again.

“...well,” you say, “I can’t just sit here and let you be screwed up alone, can I,” You reach over and cup her boob with one hand, while the other goes down to her crotch and tangles up with hers, and you start to get her off together. “Be fuckin’ un-neighborly of me.”

 

* * *

 

You ended up on the floor, sitting on top of Rose while you shoved your dick in between her lubed-up breasts. She never lets you do this, she always has to be on top, or at least on her knees in front of you, upright, so that she can control what’s going on. But this time you were both so into it that you couldn’t wait long enough to get that arranged. She sort of gets her senses back when you’re about to pop, turning her head aside so that you come on the floor instead of getting it all over her face - Rose does not accept dicks or cum in any kind of confidential relationship with her face or her mouth, but she likes having your swordkind in her cleavage enough to play chicken with that proposition. She strokes you all the way through your climax, and then you get back on top of her, kneading her breasts like lumps of dough and pinching and sucking on her nipples until her back arched under you and her legs went crazy banging her feet on the floor as she boiled over.

You all lay there for a stretch, afterwards.

Kanaya was pretty wiped, too - that sex maniac mode trolls go into when they really get revved up with their quadrants pretty much burns through all their energy, so she just kinda laid there like a very hot gay lump for a while while Rox snoozed on top of her, half asleep. She was _completely_ out of it, just lounging there on the bed giggling, banged all the way silly.

Eventually, Kanaya gets herself going again, disappears into the bathroom for a few minutes, and then starts Momming all over you. The three of you are enveloped in a terrifying whirlwind of Mom Energy, pushing water and apple juice down your throats, wiping the geneslime off you, spreading towels around, dumping your clothes into a laundry basket.

You shower (Rose and Kanaya, of course, have special soap and shampoo for cleaning off troll jizz). Kan makes it real clear that you’re going to use conditioner, too. Then you get dressed (in the clean clothes fresh out of the dryer Kanaya has waiting for you when you get out) and then Kanaya sits you down on her and Rose’s bed, and starts brushing your hair and rubbing moisturizer all over your face and hands.

You are pretty sure your face is redder than your cape. Somehow this is kind of erotic too, and this coming from someone who just had a foursome, as she gets those long oiled-up fingers all over you and makes small talk and sort of coos at you with the bug-communication machinery down in her chest. This makes sense, you reflect. Kanaya’s, like, once removed from the very first mom ever, that’s like super-concentrated hella refined mom essence. Her Mom Radiation probably has profound effects on you in close proximity.

“Thanks,” you say, super fucking awkwardly, when there’s a pause in her musing.

She gives you an awfully Rose-like smile. “It was going to bother me for the rest of the day if I didn’t do something about it. Now, come here. Your claws need filing, badly.”

She starts sanding your nails down. You don’t even remember the last time you did this. She hums as she works like she’s a Goddamned housewife and you’re her darning.

(Well, like, that’s definitely not the most inaccurate statement you could make.)

“So,” you try to break the silence that seems real awkward to you but maybe doesn’t seem awkward to Kanaya? You have no clue, “What do you want to bet they’re making out in the shower.”

Kanaya sighs. “I hope not. They’ve tired themselves out.”  
  
“What’s this ‘they’ shit? Pretty sure it was _you_ that tired them out,” You raise an eyebrow, glad to have your shades back.  
  
She blushes. (Wow. You made Kanaya Maryam blush.) “Yes. Uhm. Well. You helped, too. They seem to enjoy themselves. And they object loudly whenever I suggest reining myself in a little.”

“Hey,” you say, “Whatever makes Rose happy, I’m here for.”

She looks at you, with another really painfully Rose-ish face - the face that feels like her eyes are trying to drill into your skull and see what’s happening in your brain. “I mean, y’know. Figuratively as in I’m totally cool with it, and also literally I guess, if you want that? It seems like you want that. Do you want that?” You stare at her for a moment, your mouth running away down the street without any warning, dragging its leash behind it while you jog in its wake unsuccessfully trying to get it to heel. “Like, is this all ok with you?”

Kanaya’s face is all nervous, it blushes a little green and she kind of fidgets, and for a sec you think she’s about to have another quadrant-boundary-induced case of the vapors, god you really do not need that right now, you need a fucking straight answer...

But she gives you a little smile, this one not very Rose-like, and says, “I rather think it is.”

She finishes doing your nails, and you inspect them for a minute while she goes over to a desk in the corner. There’s a _thunk_ and you jump a little. She’s decaptchaed the big canister of oil you got her and is looking it over real intently.

“What are you actually gonna do with that?” you ask, cracking your neck.  
  
“Just as I said,” she glances over her shoulder real quick, “Grease my rip-engine’s chain. It’s a lot harder to keep my equipment in good order here than I anticipated. I find myself having to go to human hive maintenance stores a lot of the time.”

“Wait.” you say, as the exact implications of this slowly filter through your tired, sex-drunk noggin. “You, uh. You still, like, keep your lipstick chainsaw working?”

Kanaya blinks. “...don’t you keep your weapon in good condition?”

“...I mean I don’t like let my dumb Welsh sword rust away or anything-” (you still hate it, but it’s got … memories attached to it now. they aren’t good memories. but you can’t let them go anywhere.) “-but it’s not like I expect to be doing any swording here. Like who am I gonna be swording, random-ass chess guys or trolls who went to church last Wednesday with a statue of me on one of the walls?”

Kanaya’s eyebrows lower just a tad, like she heard what you said but the words were out of order or something. “Of course not. I would never raise a weapon against one of the people we are responsible for.”  
  
“So - like - we’re done. It’s over.”  
  
She nods. “Yes.”  
  
“So...”  
  
“So, if anything ever threatened those people - or my matesprit, or Karkat, or Roxy, or you -” Wait, what? “-or anyone I care for, I would again have an urgent need for a chainsaw.”

You remember again - you keep forgetting, and the occasions when this happens keep getting farther and farther apart, but they never _quite_ dry up - that you’re sitting across from an alien. An alien who grew up on a planet that made your home, with all its dumb problems and shitty ideas, look like a romantic stroll down the boardwalk. Kanaya has killed a _bunch_ of people, and would definitely kill a lot more if it meant protecting her weird little family of trauma survivors.  
  
_Oh Jesus fear boner not now-_

 

* * *

 

You laze around for the rest of the day.

You and Rox nap some. Rose reads. Kanaya sews a little and disappears to the kitchen a few times so she can push more food on you all. But inevitably you all end up back together, sometimes in a straight up pile, sometimes just next to one another, primarily in Rose and Kanaya’s bed, and you watch more Downton Abbey.

When the sun starts to go down, you get up, even though you really don’t want to, but you don’t want to horn in on their time. There’s a guest room, you know where it is, or maybe you’ll just zip back to your last save point and sleep in the next motel on your route.

They won’t have it. Rose actually looks mad that you even suggested it, so you change into your PJs and you all just get under the covers together. Kanaya insists on staying with the three of you and just sticking a little sopor patch on her forehead instead of abandoning you for her ‘coon. You and Rose lie in your customary position, back to back, spines touching, aimed away from one another, but always in arm’s reach. Roxy cuddles up to you, her head burrowing into your chest, and her hair is really soft and you can’t make yourself tell her that’s not a good idea.

And when, predictably, you go stiff and start shuddering, when you get stuck in that place in between asleep and awake where you’ve sort of figured out that you’re having a nightmare, and that you can get out if you just try, but the need to not be there anymore is still the only thing in your head and you start freaking and pumping your legs, you headbutt Roxy in the face.

Her squeak shocks you out of that place, out of the stasis and the endless waiting, from the uncertain horror of the quiet times in the room where you grew up, and you lay there, shivering, curling up in a ball and squeezing your eyes shut so they can’t see your pain, how weak and sad you actually are underneath everything.

Rose is there, like always, stroking your hair and saying soothing, meaningless little things to you, but now there’s more than just her. Roxy puts a hand on both sides of your face and starts murmuring momly things to you, and you think that if you ever admit to her or anyone how good that feels you’ll probably just die on the spot, god tier or no god tier, and then Kanaya just sweeps all of you into a huge long-armed hug, and she starts … humming.  
  
You go through your mental library of Weird Troll Noises, and you realize that this is the one for palerom. It’s a sound trolls make when their moirail is distressed or violent, that’s supposed to do some NLP on them and calm them down.  
  
You’re not a troll, but it’s sure working on you.

“...is this okay?” Kanaya whispers, after a moment. “Rose, Dave … do you mind… I know this is your quadrant, your moirallegiance, but…

You want to laugh. Rose does it for you. “Of course,” she says back, kissing her xenowife smack on the lips. “You’re welcome in all of my quadrants, Kanaya.”

A vampire-shaped searchlight flips on in the middle of the room. Kanaya is so flustered she started lighting up again, which gives you all a real good look at the face she’s making at the invitation Rose just threw out.

 _Now_ you laugh, and Roxy laughs too, and eventually the air is so disgustingly pregnant with mirth that Kanaya smiles and gives a little goofy grin that her fangs reconfigure into something weird and alien and totally bizarre.

You wish you had your camera, you think. You kinda want a picture of that face.

It occurs to you, then, that there’s a tiny, infinitesimal outside possibility. It’s a ridiculous notion that you wouldn’t ever have entertained previously for fear of being laughed out of the building like a crackpot scientist with a crazy theory, that you have to stumble down the steps to the museum after being laughed out of a meeting with a bunch of rich businessmen trying to get funding for research to investigate. This is the kind of idea that your further exploration of is going to depend entirely on the generosity of an eccentric billionaire whose mysterious agent you bump into by happenstance in a bar, leading to him bankrolling your studies of the possibility, but eventually you find out that he knew what was going on the whole time and he manipulated you to get access to your findings to use for his own nefarious purposes.

It’s that kind of notion.

But still, even knowing all that, you still have this feeling that maybe, just maybe, everything is gonna be okay.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @kurifurinkan, TriadicUniverse, and inklesspen for beta reading, and thanks to Iny for helping design Dirk's game of not-Monopoly!
> 
> Thanks also to machinekeys for writing 'Those Who Favor Fire' (https://archiveofourown.org/works/431997) and obstreperose for writing Rose and Roxy and 'Kanaya All Do It, and What’s More, They Do It With Each Other - All Three of Them' (http://insecure.archiveofourown.org/works/7716187), two fics that I love very much and both of which had a lot of influence on how the characters in this story were portrayed.
> 
> And thanks yet again to the mods, for running a great event, and for bearing with me.


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